
Episode #23
Chris Rynn Stories
In this Unsilenced story, forensic artist Chris Rynn talks about the decade spent enhancing images and videos for police investigations into child sexual abuse. Beginning in 2007, he developed techniques that helped identify offenders from hand and body details, working on around 100 cases. One of the earliest and most widely publicised was the 2009 LGBT Youth Scotland case involving a ring of eight men and an 18-month-old child. Chris describes how the work, which no one else was doing, gradually destroyed his health. Night terrors, repeated vomiting that caused a hiatus hernia, a severe spinal injury sustained while working on a case, and flashbacks triggered by the sound of children playing left him with a formal diagnosis of severe PTSD. His employer provided no ongoing monitoring or counselling. He was eventually signed off and later dismissed. The impact has been permanent. He can no longer be around children, including those of friends and family. Plans to foster were abandoned. The damage has extended to his wife and their shared future. Chris’s account shows that the harm of child sexual abuse reaches far beyond the primary victims - it scars the families of those who investigate it and the professionals who try to bring offenders to justice. His story is included because of the direct link to the LGBT Youth Scotland case and the wider safeguarding questions it continues to raise. Chris on X https://x.com/dr_rynn Chris on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-christopher-rynn-43984314 Chris facial reconstruction projects: https://www.instagram.com/chris_rynn Crowd funder for Punin2 Facial Reconstruction Project https://ko-fi.com/punin2 Go to our web site where you can discover how to contribute your story and find out more. https://www.unsilencedproject.co.uk Follow Unsilenced Project on X: https://x.com/UnsilencedProj

