A disgraced Conservative councillor and former Christian youth worker broke down in the dock as he was jailed for child sex offences.
John George Reaney, who quit the town council after he was charged last summer, was jailed for 16 months
John George Reaney had arranged to meet a 14-year-old boy via the gay dating site Grindr.
Reaney, 51, who resigned from Colwyn Bay Town Council after he was charged last summer, claimed he thought the boy was 16.
Jailing him today at Mold Crown Court, Judge Niclas Parry told Reaney that he had “taken a deliberate risk” when he met the boy on June 29 last year.
The judge told him: “In your heart you knew the male you had met less than an hour earlier was under 16, clearly so.
“You were controlled by your sexual urges and they overcame your reason.”
The judge said he was sure Reaney understood fully that the law he broke was there to protect young children
“Your victim’s mother truly knew what was good for him and what was bad for him,” he said, but the boy had defied her.
Judge Parry said he accepted that there was no pre-planning and no grooming, and until he met the boy he believed he was meeting an adult for consensual sexual activity.
But he told him: “When you saw him, you should have left.”
Reaney had no previous convictions but had clearly “acted out of character in a moment of madness,” the judge added.
Mold Crown Court heard how he told police he “got swept along in the moment” and said the boy had convinced him he was 16 after originally telling him via the site that he was 18 but looked younger.
Reaney picked him up in his car at a Tesco car park in another north Wales town and then drove him to his then home where the sexual activity took place.
He said he “asked him and asked him again” about his age.
Reaney, now 51, at the time of Llanelian Heights, Old Colwyn, but who is now living in Woodland Avenue, Ormskirk, denied inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, and sexual touching on the basis he believed he was 16.
But the jury took just over an hour to convict him.
The court heard how he was a man of good character, well thought of in the church who worked with young people.
He was described as a talented man with a heart of gold by those who gave references.
His local MP David Jones , former Secretary of State for Wales, said he and his wife met him through their church, he had known Reaney for about 11 years, he was active in the social life of the church and was a chorister and reader.
He was a fine singer who gave concerts to raise funds for charitable events and had secured the Tory nomination for the town council, the court heard.
Reaney was jailed for 16 months and put on the sex offenders register for 10 years.
http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/john-reaney-tory-grindr-jail-12110146
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