EXCLUSIVE: Carlette Norwood was seated next to her colleague in a car when she discovered he was a convicted sex offender.

Norwood runs an award-winning independent theater in Birmingham, UK, and had hired the man she then knew as Ryan Jay as a technical director one year prior, in 2024.

Everything had checked out. Jay had a solid CV and Norwood had found him on the Mandy jobs platform, a database she had used previously for hiring. She ran a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, which flags criminal records, on the name ‘Ryan Jay’ and it came back clean. He worked hard, was talented and the pair struck what Norwood describes as a very close friendship, bonding over their love of theater and shared grief, having both lost spouses.

“There was never anything romantic between us but we spent a lot of time together,” she explains. “We texted all day. We would go to dinner sometimes. Unless you’ve lost a spouse, you really don’t understand what that feels like, so it was nice to have somebody who had been through that kind of loss.”

Fast forward a year and, in a scene befitting a small-screen thriller, Norwood was sitting in the car next to Jay as she opened a handwritten letter from an anonymous sender containing newspaper clippings and information telling her that he was not who he said he was.

“It said, ‘Do you know who this man is, do you know who you are working with?'”

Norwood says Ryan “freaked out” when he realized what was happening. At first, he convinced Norwood that the letter came from a former colleague with a vendetta. Days later, she received a similar anonymous email, and this time she digested the attached article.

The man who had befriended her, opened up to her about his dead spouse and been welcomed into her home was not ‘Ryan Jay’ but was in fact Jason Ryan, who in 2021 had been given a 23-month suspended prison sentence in a court in Ireland for sending dozens of messages to a 14-year-old girl, described by a judge as “grooming in nature.”

An Irish Independent report from the courtroom said that Ryan sent the teenager 40 Facebook messages in one day from an account under a different name. “You look so hot and your body is so mmm,” read one message. Another asked the teen if his texts would “turn you on a little.” Ryan also told the girl he had performed a sexual act to one of her pictures and asked if she was sexually active, adding he “knew some girls who start at 12.” He later told local police he thought she was 15 or 16. Police found he was using five Facebook accounts in different names. After receiving the messages, his victim told the court she had become anxious and frightened that he might come after her.

Ryan pleaded guilty to one count of sexual exploitation. Several months later, near where he lived in Cheshire, northern England, he was required to attend a court hearing and given a 10-year notification requirement, meaning he had to register with police at that location and inform police of changes in his details such as name, home address or bank account, or if he was using different names online. Under UK law, failure to comply can lead to a maximum prison sentence of five years.

“I was terrified of him because of the level of betrayal and his ability to lie to my face,” says Norwood.

In images we have been sent of Ryan by Norwood, he cuts a friendly, confident figure, giving off the appearance of a music hall singer. Some of these pictures show him at an event in Birmingham with Black Box theater colleagues and attended by officials of UK actors union Equity just a few weeks before he was outed by Norwood’s anonymous tipper. Little information is available about him on the internet but from speaking to those who have worked with him, the Irishman appears to be a bit of a jack of all trades  – performing, directing, running a production company and teaching drama in schools. He is roughly in his late forties.

The ease with which he was able to find work in the entertainment industry by simply changing his name has caused alarm, and his is not the only case of this ilk. Chris Higgins, who ran a theater school, was jailed for 10 months for sending sexually explicit messages to a 14-year-old. After he had been bailed and with conditions imposed, BBC News reported that Higgins had posed for a picture next to a young girl, been interviewed on stage at a school drama production and congratulated youth theater performers in a WhatsApp group chat. The teen’s parents later questioned how her abuser was able to continue working with children following his arrest.

On numerous occasions, Norwood and a cohort of others have contacted the police, Equity, local politicians and even the UK government’s department for Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) to complain about Ryan’s behavior. All, they feel, to little avail. An Equity spokeswoman described the situation as a “distressing issue” — “one which needs a robust response and action to root out inappropriate or dangerous behaviour.”

Deadline put all allegations published in this article to Ryan on multiple occasions and he has not responded to our requests for comment.

Tracing Jason Ryan’s footsteps

Since his conviction in Ireland, Ryan has moved around the UK a fair bit, living for a while in Cheshire, touring a play across the north of England and then landing his job with Norwood’s Black Box theater in Birmingham.

Norwood says she was shocked, hurt and afraid once she discovered the truth about him. After confronting Ryan, terminating his contract and telling him to leave her life, she was mortified when Ryan contacted her daughter, who was 21 at the time, via social media. “He’d never messaged her before and the fact he messaged her after I had exposed him was scary,” she says.

At the same time, Norwood realized she was not alone in having fallen victim to Ryan’s deceit and set about figuring out who it was that had sent her the anonymous letter and emails.

It didn’t take long. Ryan could be traced back to a 2023 touring play that he directed and starred in titled The Story of Ireland, which started casting just a few months after his 2021 conviction and opened in Salford, near Manchester, soon after. At this time, Jason Ryan opted for the pseudonym Ryan Ireland, choosing to name himself after the play. In the promo poster for the show, all actors are facing the camera, while he alone is stood in the middle facing the opposite way.

Two actors who worked on that play, Michelle Riley and Shelley Rivers, tell Deadline they got on well with Ryan at first, before learning of his real identity and subsequently feeling stalked and intimidated by his behavior.

Riley says she noticed he was guarded when discussing his family and always left work earlier than the rest of the cast and crew. Rivers had a similar experience to Norwood. At first, she found Ryan to be “very nice, very charming and kind of a man of mystery,” and the pair briefly dated.

However, towards the end of The Story of Ireland’s first run of shows, a producer on the show told the cast about Ryan’s true identity.

“I started researching him and emailed the police with everything that had gone on,” says Riley. “The guy had been up and down the country gigging, not to mention doing this show in different venues. His confidence had grown.”

After the Story of Ireland cast found out, Deadline has seen evidence that Ryan was visited at least once by his liaison officer, while others from the production cut ties with him. The liaison officer’s visit did not hold him back from applying to work at Norwood’s Black Box theater.

Rivers now feels as though she has been the victim of stalking that has caused psychological harm. Long after The Story of Ireland finished, Rivers is convinced she was still being contacted by Ryan on social media accounts under different names that were following her ex-partner and his ex-wife and daughter. One of them, named James Rogers, used the same phrases and nicknames Ryan had used in the past and knew information about her and her whereabouts at the time. “I would get messages from these accounts saying things like: ‘Safe flight back from Germany’ or, ‘The weather’s bad, so drive safe’,” she says.

Rivers says Ryan has also sent her several long emails, all from different email addresses, that always finish with “I will never contact you again.” She has blocked all social media accounts that she believes Ryan is using to contact her.

Rivers also alleges Ryan would turn up to her shows and watch her without asking her permission, which “made things awkward because he knew I wouldn’t out him in a public place.”

Meanwhile, Riley’s anxiety was heightened when her garden gate was recently damaged by someone. In a worsening state of paranoia, she says she felt she was constantly seeing the same car outside her house, which she has reported to the police. Deadline has seen no evidence that Ryan was the cause of either.

“I was in a state of panic because he knew where I lived,” says Riley. “It was very heightened, because I didn’t know where he was, yet he had access to all of us. I was telling the police all of this.”

She adds that she “kept thinking back” to the reporting from the time of his conviction, which said Ryan had “entered a bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour.” Riley questions whether his actions since have been in line with this bond.

In 2025, Rivers landed a role in a play at the aforementioned Black Box theater in Birmingham. That is when she realized Ryan was still working, but under a different name. It was Rivers and Riley who sent the anonymous information to Norwood.

“Carlette [Norwood] was telling me how wonderful this Ryan Jay was and I was like, ‘Oh my god how am I going to tell her who this man is?’,” says Rivers.

Far from wanting Rivers out of his life given that she knew his backstory, Rivers believes Ryan told staff at the Black Box to cast her. “He didn’t seem to think it was his problem,” she adds. “It was simply inconvenient that Carlette had found out. I’m not saying people don’t deserve a second chance, but he doesn’t go into these things and say, ‘Look this is who I am and if you want to work with me then that’s great’. He goes in, waits to see if it all goes pear-shaped, and then carries on and picks up elsewhere.”

Cheshire Police told us Ryan does not have a Sexual Harm Prevention Order in place, “and therefore it should be noted that there are no restrictions in place relating to his contact with under 18s.” Yet those we have spoken with for this article are of the view that Ryan should be forced to disclose his past if working in roles where minors are present.

“The only restrictions relate to ensuring any names he uses online or at work are registered under the terms of the Sex Offenders Notification Requirements,” the police add.

Despite the terms of this order, and despite Ryan having been reported to the police for using different names online and at work, the spokeswoman for Cheshire Police said it had “thoroughly investigated” several reports made to them since Ryan’s conviction, but “there is insufficient evidence of any criminal offences at this time.” The police did not disclose any more detail to Deadline.

The case raises questions about how UK authorities keep tabs on people convicted of child sex crimes overseas. Despite the activity described in this article taking place in the UK, the Culture, Media & Sport department refused to comment on the grounds that Ryan was convicted in Ireland.

We have seen evidence, however, of government correspondence that said Ryan was last year referred to the Hydrant Programme, a national policing programme that supports local police in child protection and abuse investigation cases. “If theatres hire an individual knowing that they will be working with children, then a check of some degree is essential,” this CMS official said after receiving a complaint about Ryan, failing to acknowledge that his simple workaround was to use a pseudonym.

Riley, Rivers and Norwood have formed something of a vigilante squad since the middle of last year trying to hold Ryan to account. They have been joined by Alexa Morden, who runs the popular 98% Podcast that seeks to unearth instances of film, TV and theater industry malpractice, and Ben Fletcher, a theater producer and writer.

The group feel their attempts have been met with a Kafkaesque layer of bureaucracy, told by police that they do not have enough evidence to prove he has broken the terms of his register or committed a crime, and told by others to keep contacting the police.

The group has implored Equity to circulate to tell all members what they know about Ryan and urge others not to work with him.

An Equity spokeswoman tells us the union had “raised concerns directly” with a West Midlands theater, which we understand to be the Black Box, after finding out about Ryan’s behavior in April 2025. “We have also supported several members who have been in touch with us in relation to concerns,” adds the spokeswoman.

Morden told us: “I have been supporting individuals affected by this person for more than two years. All we want is to keep people safe. It should not be this easy for a convicted sex offender to continue working in our industry, and with children, avoiding accountability by changing his name and taking advantage of the lack of regulation.”

She calls for “a consistent safeguarding framework, and meaningful accountability.” “Without those structures, this remains a dangerous industry for many to work in,” she adds.

Since leaving the Black Box theater, we are told of at least one amateur performance that dropped Ryan after discovering the truth about his past.

Those we have spoken to for this article believe he is working again, but they are not sure where he is, who for, or under what name.