Aimee Knight

Aimee Knight (née Challenor, born 1 October 1997) is a British transgender activist, a former spokesperson and electoral candidate for the Green Party, and a former Reddit administrator.

Knight and her two younger siblings were taken into care in 2013 after social services expressed concerns about her parents.

Knight came out as trans in 2014; her older sibling is also a transgender woman.

As a child, Knight was diagnosed with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.

She was educated at Lewis Charlton Learning Centre, an independent special school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Knight then attended Henley College Coventry, where she was the college's National Union of Students (NUS) lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) officer.

Knight joined the Green Party of England and Wales in November 2014.

She was the chair of LGBTIQA+ Greens (LGBT, plus intersex, queer, asexual, and other) between 2015 and 2017.

Knight's father had been reported to the police in 2015 and charged in November 2016.

David Challenor became a member of the Green Party in December 2015 when Knight gifted him a membership.

Knight became the party's equality spokesperson in 2016.

According to the Green Party, Knight was the only trans spokesperson for a UK political party.

Knight stood for Coventry City Council elections as a member of the Green Party in February 2016 and May 2016.

In November 2016, Knight informed party coordinators by Facebook messenger that he had been charged with the sexual offences.

In 2017, she stood for election in Coventry South, receiving 1.3% of the votes.

Knight became a topic of contention after she had been hired as an administrator by Reddit in light of controversies, including her father's sex crimes against children, resulting in several subreddits protesting her employment by the company.

In the aftermath, Reddit confirmed in an official statement that Knight was no longer employed.

Although assigned male at birth, Knight started identifying as a girl around the age of 10.

In April 2017, Knight helped co-found the Global Greens LGBT+ Network alongside colleagues from Die Grünen, Groen, Taiwan Tree Party, and Taiwan Green Party.

In July 2017, Knight was the Green candidate for Coventry South.

She received 1.3% of the vote share, with 604 votes.

Following this, Knight chose her father as her election agent for the 2017 general election and also the 2018 council elections.

Knight had given her father's name as "Baloo Challenor" on campaign materials, later commenting that he was known locally by this nickname.

After her father's sentencing, Knight – who insisted she did not know the allegations against her father in full – stood down from the Green Party's deputy leadership election.

She did not disclose these charges in writing, as is required, when she signed up as a party candidate in 2017 and 2018.

Knight lived with her mother in Coventry in 2018, while studying for a B.A. in philosophy, politics and economics at the Open University.

When she was 15, Knight was arrested over claims she threatened to crash the Bullring shopping centre website.

This led to police raiding the family home.

No charges were laid, and the case was later dropped.

She stood in a May 2018 local election and was not elected.

Knight stood in the 2018 party election to be deputy leader, which closed at the end of August.

In August 2018, Knight's father David Challenor was sentenced to 22 years in prison for raping and torturing a 10-year-old girl in the attic of the home shared by him, his wife Tina Challenor, and Knight.

When her father was convicted and sentenced in August 2018, he was expelled from the party with immediate effect.

Correspondingly, Knight and her mother Tina, were both suspended from the party pending an inquiry, with Knight resigning before the associated disciplinary process got underway.

Knight was consequently suspended from the party on a no-fault basis, and the party launched an inquest into possible safeguarding failures as her father was allowed to act as her election agent after having been charged.

In September 2018, Knight resigned from the Green Party citing transphobia; however, Knight continued to cooperate with the inquest.

In October 2018, she joined the Liberal Democrats, becoming the Diversity Officer of her local party.

The inquest by Verita found in January 2019 that she had committed a "serious error of judgement" in appointing her father as her campaign manager.

The report also said that the Green Party, who were told by Knight that her father had been arrested but not that he was a party member, could have done more to investigate the matter.

She was suspended from the Liberal Democrats in July 2019, after tweets appeared on her partner's account admitting to having sexual fantasies involving sex with children.