Councillor Alex Kear aimed to abuse three-year-old girl

A councillor who arranged to engage in sex acts with what he thought was a three-year-old girl has been jailed.

Alex Kear, 50, thought he was meeting with a child's mother after sending her indecent requests, but the woman was an undercover police officer.

Kear was jailed for four years and ordered to serve an extended licence period by a judge at Leeds Crown Court.

Kear, of Stansfield Drive, Castleford, was autistic and had an anxiety disorder, his barrister said.

Kear, who sat as an independent councillor on Wakefield Council, sent indecent pictures to the officer, whom he thought was the child's mother, along with depraved messages about what he wanted to do to the youngster.

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Jonathan Sharp, prosecuting, told the judge that Kear said: "The older I get the younger I seem to like. Twenty years ago I would never had thought about a baby but now... young."

'Waited for years'

Mr Sharp said the defendant met with the undercover police officer and had agreed to meet again with the (fictional) three-year-old on 19 August , 2019.

Kear had told the undercover officer: "The years I have waited for something like this to happen."

Judge Simon Phillips QC told him: "This is a deep-seated degeneracy on your behalf."

Kear admitted a charge of arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sexual offence and another of inciting the sexual exploitation of a child under the age of 13.

Kear was elected as a councillor in the Castleford ward of Wakefield Council in May 2019.

Wakefield Council had said it was frustrated it could not remove him from his position as a councillor, because the law said this could only be done when defendants were jailed for three months or more.

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