Self-confessed neo-Nazi Jack Renshaw is a convicted paedophile who was jailed last year for grooming two underage boys online, it can now be revealed.
The information came to light following news he will not face a retrial for membership of the banned extremist group, National Action.
Renshaw set up two fake Facebook profiles and contacted the boys, aged 13 and 14, between February 2016 and January 2017.
Communicating via Facebook messenger, Renshaw boasted to the youngsters that he was rich, could give them jobs and offered one of them £300 to spend the night with him.
He also requested intimate photographs of the pair, before one of the boys reported the messages to his tutor and the police were contacted.
Renshaw claimed in his defence that an anti-fascist group had fabricated the allegations to discredit him.
He said Hope Not Hate had hacked his mobile phones to send messages of a sexual nature to the teenagers.
But jurors at Preston Crown Court did not believe him. They convicted him of four counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. In 2018, he was sentenced to 16 months in jail, the Press Association reports.
Renshaw, 23, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, had already received a three-year prison sentence two months earlier when he was found guilty by a different jury at the same court of stirring up racial hatred after he called for the genocide of Jewish people.
Both cases can be fully reported following the end of proceedings he faced at the Old Bailey – where a jury was unable to reach a verdict on a charge that he was a member of banned far-right group National Action.
Renshaw had admitted making preparations to kill his local Labour MP Rosie Cooper in 2017 and making a threat to kill police officer Victoria Henderson who was investigating him.
He bought a 19in (48cm) knife but his plan was scuppered by whistleblower Robbie Mullen, who was at a meeting in a pub when Renshaw announced that he was going to commit the murder.
It came just a year after Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed and shot by a fellow far-right extremist, Thomas Mair.
Grooming
During the investigation for the grooming charges, police seized two phones from Renshaw’s then family address in Blackpool, Lancashire.
Another two phones belonging to Renshaw were later recovered and they showed evidence of searches for homosexual pornography.
When interviewed, he told police he was heterosexual and a virgin who did not believe in sex outside of marriage, and viewed homosexuality as “unnatural”.
He went on to blame others for putting material on his phone as he told them: “I believe this is a vicious, malicious attack to put me in prison, to ostracise me from the nationalist movement and to ostracise me from my family.”
But at his trial he said that was a “kneejerk reaction” and he told the jury he now believed Hope Not Hate had hacked all four phones by “some form of synchronised access”.
He said: “They are obsessed with me. They had a gripe with me for a long time.
“They have been writing articles about me since 2014.
“There was a pure hatred of me and everything I stand for.”
Following his convictions for child sex offences he was placed on the Sex Offender Register for 10 years and was told by Judge Robert Altham his 16-month jail term would start after he has completed his sentence for inciting racial hatred.
Renshaw had denied those offences, committed during a demonstration by a group named the North West Infidels on Blackpool Promenade in March 2016, and at a gathering of far-right extremists, the Yorkshire Forum For Nationalists.
The court heard that the defendant had described Jewish people as parasites and called for them to be “eradicated” at the Yorkshire event.
During that sentencing hearing, Renshaw nodded his head in the dock as Judge Altham questioned whether he still held the same views as he had when he gave the two speeches.
The judge noted: “The defendant is resolute in his original views and withdraws nothing.
“He seeks to raise street armies, perpetrate violence against Jewish people and ultimately bring about genocide.”