She claims child abuse revelations ruined CEO's enjoyment of Bruce Springsteen concert

Children in Need’s chairwoman has sensationally quit after firing a broadside at its board over funding to a Scottish charity.

Rosie Millard, a well-known broadcast journalist and columnist for The Independent, resigned after six years at the helm over grants awarded to LGBT Youth Scotland (LGBTYS).

Millard was critical over a lack of diligence taken by Children in Need, a major grant-giving charity. These centred on the fact it awarded grants to LGBTYS, despite its former chief executive, Jamie Rennie, being convicted in 2009 of child sex ­assaults. Children in Need started giving cash to the charity seven months later.

Another man, Andrew Easton, who wrote a schools guide for the youth charity, was convicted this year of sharing indecent images of children, including some of newborn babies.

Her letter centres on Children in Need’s chief executive, Simon Antrobus, for his response to the revelations, amid revelations that it awarded £466,000 in total to LGBTYS.

Millard blamed Children in Need for “institutional failure”, saying it had serious questions to answer about due diligence.

It suspended grants to LGBTYS in May after Millard alerted her board to the James Rennie case and withdrew funding three months later after a review.

Millard said she had told Antrobus, chief executive since 2016, in May this year over grants made to the charity but that he hesitated for months about taking any action.

The former chair claims Antrobus as well as senior managers did their utmost to mislead the board from severing funding to LGBTYS during the three-month review including a “bogus issue of safeguarding”, which was eventually dismissed.

Rennie, former chief executive of LGBTYS from 2003 to 2008, was jailed after being ­revealed as a member of one of Britain’s worst paedophile rings.

He was sentenced to life in jail for sexually assaulting a three-month-old child and for conspiring to get access to children in order to abuse them. During his case, the court was told Rennie often accessed a Hotmail account for the sex abuse ring at the offices of LGBTYS.

Just seven months after Rennie was sentenced, the first grant of £24,000 from Children in Need was awarded.

In 2022 two men claimed that they were groomed at LGBTYS around the time Rennie was chief executive after which LGBTYS suspended a staff member and referred itself to the police.

Then in September of this year Andrew Easton, 39, who contributed to an early version of coming out guidance issued by the charity, was handed a Community Payback Order with supervision for three years and ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work and placed on the sex offenders register for three years.

He had been snared by cybercrime police over online chats and videos with someone who he believed was a vulnerable 13 year old boy.

Much of Millard’s ire is targeted at Antrobus who, she said, failed to respond “with the necessary level of seriousness” to the revelations about Rennie and Easton and only cut funding because he feared negative publicity.

When told of the child abuse, Antrobus complained that it had spoilt his enjoyment of a Bruce Springsteen ­concert, claimed Millard.

She calls Antrobus “solipsistic” in her letter.

She also said that another Children in Need employee had suggested that a victim was “out to get” LGBTYS. She responded: “That they could write this about the reported rape of a child is ­astonishing.”

However in response LGBTYS said Millard’s resignation was yet another attack on the charity because of its stance on transgender rights.

It said the former chair had an anti-inclusivity motive while using historic allegations against it in an attempt to destroy the organisation's reputation.

Mhairi Crawford, chief executive at LGBT Youth Scotland, told TFN: “Rosie Millard’s astonishing resignation letter demonstrates the ideologically driven nature of her attacks on our organisation, and calls into question her suitability for a role such as chair of a nationally significant charity.

“It is only appropriate that wider boards challenge a chair who demonstrably ignores robust evidence in their decision making.

“We are pleased to see confirmation that Children in Need’s investigations into the work of LGBT Youth Scotland found nothing to report.

“Time and time again, those with anti-inclusivity motives point to historic allegations against us in attempts to destroy our reputation. Allegations that have been investigated and cleared by Police Scotland, and proven to have had no link to our charity and our work.

“What is often lost amid these attacks is that LGBT Youth Scotland supports thousands of people and exists to make a more inclusive and fairer Scotland.

“A further reason we have such strong backing by the Scottish Government, local authorities, major employers and the public sector is because our work is in line with the stated aims of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).”