Scout leader jailed for child sex offences
A former scout leader from Oxfordshire has been jailed for six years for abusing children over a 15-year period.
Brian Bailey, 42, of High Street, Abingdon, pleaded guilty to 18 of 25 charges against him at Amersham Crown Court, Buckinghamshire.
The offences were committed against six boys at a flat in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, between 1990 and 2005.
Lord Justice Parmoor said: "I think he is thoroughly dangerous and has a history of abusing young boys."
He added Bailey had previous convictions for abusing "the young children of a friend" and that "much more work needs to be done as part of his sexual treatment programme".
The charges included 12 counts of indecent assault, three counts of inciting a child to commit an act of gross indecency and three counts of possessing indecent images of children.
In addition, he faced six counts of making indecent images of children, one of taking indecent images and four counts of supplying cannabis.
Bailey was previously jailed for abusing young boys in 2005 but was released in 2007 under supervision by the police and probation service.
Bailey was an assistant scout leader in Aylesbury in the late 1980s and early 1990s, police said.
Speaking before the sentencing, Det Sgt Steve Ring from Thames Valley Police said: "Mr Bailey relied on them being intoxicated at the time and it was almost like bribing boys to be in that flat to be abused.
"Boys who were more vulnerable, he manipulated them to such an extent that they passively allowed him to abuse them."
Bailey's release from prison for his previous child abuse conviction came before the new allegations arose, in May 2010, that he had indecently assaulted boys at his home for more than a decade.
Police subsequently found more than 100,000 images of sex abuse against children on his home computer.
Speaking to police after his arrest, Bailey had said his actions had felt "quite natural".
"At the time it didn't faze me at all. It was like a grooming technique that I'd learnt to get what I want," he told them.
Paul Gillbard from Thames Valley Probation Service said: "If a person is devious and was deliberately setting out to hide their activity, unless it came to light in some way, they could do that."
One of the victims, now in his 20s, told the BBC: "At the time we never really spoke about it as friends, it just happened.
"He would, for instance, sit next to you and start putting his hand on you, judging what kind of reaction he would get to see how he would carry on what he was to maybe do".