Former council leader jailed for sexually assaulting young men

A former SNP council leader has been jailed for 18 months for sexually assaulting five young men.

Jordan Linden, who stood down as leader of North Lanarkshire Council in 2022 after the allegations emerged, was convicted in March following a seven-day trial.

The 30-year-old was also found guilty of directing unwanted sexual communications towards seven teenagers, the youngest aged 14.

Passing sentence at Falkirk Sheriff Court, Sheriff Christopher Shead also placed Linden on the sex offenders register.

The trial heard that the sexual communications included photos of Linden in a bath and shots of his genitalia.

The offences took place over a 10-year period from 2011 until 2021.

Linden was found not guilty of a sixth charge of sexual assault and was also acquitted of five other charges of stalking and sexual communication.

Linden, who also chaired the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), had denied all the charges against him, claiming they either did not take place or were consensual.

Jailing him, Sheriff Shead said: "I have reached the conclusion that the nature of the offences is such that custody is the only appropriate disposal."

Linden showed no emotion as the sentence was announced.

He blew a kiss to his father on the public benches as he was led by guards from the dock to the cells.

Linden's defence counsel David Moggach KC said his client had been bullied in his teenage years because of his sexuality.

Mr Moggach said: "As a consquence he suffered social isolation.

"That to an extent was alleviated when he became involved in the Youth Parliament where he met people of a similar like and was able to develop social interaction with them.

"Because of a lack of social skills, social awareness and social norms, behaviour occurred which, put bluntly, shouldn't have."

Moggach added that Linden was now aware that his behaviour "simply was unacceptable and he overstepped certain boundaries."

Linden became a councillor for the SNP in 2017 and rose to become North Lanarkshire council leader in 2022.

He resigned from the post a few weeks later following the allegations and was arrested in 2024.

The court heard from an SNP party official who said Linden had locked him in a bathroom and tried to get him to urinate while he watched.

The man, who was 18 at the time, said the incident took place after a Dundee Pride parade when Linden was very drunk and being "very handsy" with people.

"He kept sitting on me, putting his hands near my crotch, putting his hands down my top," he told the court.

One man, who joined the SYP at the same time as Linden as a teenager, said Linden's touching, on the face or the cheek or the neck, was "relentless".

But when he told a youth worker at the parliament it was dismissed as "just Jordan".

Another man recalled a "traumatic evening" in 2018 at Linden's flat in Bellshill drinking and said he "vomited in disgust" after waking up to find Linden performing a sex act on him.

BBC Scotland News has spoken to one witness whose evidence was heard at Linden's trial but was not one of the charges against him.

The man, who we are calling James, said he was a teenager when he first met Linden in 2015 while campaigning for the SNP.

He said Linden had been "very overly friendly" from the start and that he had been warned to keep his distance by other people within the party.

During the trial James said Linden climbed into his bed during an overseas trip with the SNP's youth wing Young Scots for Independence and started trying to kiss him.

"I sort of shrugged it off and tried to ignore it the next day," he told BBC Scotland.

He said Linden acted as if nothing had happened, and James tried to stay away from him during the rest of the trip.

"It wasn't until a couple of years later - when I saw a number of the other individuals coming forward and I was reading the instances that happened with them - that I decided to speak out. It was nearly five or six years later," he said.

James said he initially tried to get the matter dealt with by the SNP, but eventually went to the police after the party "tried to avoid the whole situation".

He said he felt "relief" when he heard that Linden had been found guilty.

"Having to relive it numerous times over the last 10 years, it's very chilling - but getting this point where there's justice being served, it's a good feeling."

Following the conviction, First Minister John Swinney said he was "very sorry" to anyone who suffered because of Linden.

Swinney ordered an independent review of the SNP's complaints process after some witnesses claimed complaints about Linden were ignored by the party.

The SNP leader welcomed the 18-month prison sentence given to Linden.

On an election campaign stop in Hamilton, Swinney said he hoped the outcome would give Linden's victims a sense that his crimes had been punished.

He said that while he had taken steps to review his party's handling of warnings in the case, he was confident that the SNP already had a "much stronger foundation" for handling complaints.

After the sentencing, a spokesperson for the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) said it recognised the seriousness of this case and that its thoughts were with those harmed by Linden's actions.

The SYP said external investigations into the way it handled allegations against Linden in 2016 had established there was "no evidence of criminality based on the information we had at that time, and that we had properly followed procedures and guidelines in place".

It said it had referred allegations to Police Scotland and supported investigations by police and the Crown Office.

The organisation also said it was committed to maintaining a safe environment for all young people, and that its safeguarding and child protection policies and procedures had been "reviewed and strengthened on a regular basis".