Labour Councillor & School Governor John Friary guilty of grooming a child for sex on facebook

Friary, a 52-year-old Londoner has been jailed for 15 months after he was caught attempting to sexually groom a child online.

Scotland Yard said that John Friary, of Camberwell Road, SE5, was sentenced last Friday at Isleworth Crown Court. Friary, a former Labour councillor, was snared by a blackmailer posing as a 15-year-old girl on internet chat rooms.

Officers from Hertfordshire Police had been investigating Peter Simms, who pleaded guilty to blackmail at St Albans Crown Court and was subsequently jailed for 21 months in May this year.

They flagged Friary (a blackmail victim of Simms to the Met's Paedophile Unit.

"Inquiries revealed that Friary was one of the individuals Simms had been in contact with." said the Yard. "Conversations between the pair involved Friary's attempts to make arrangements to meet the individual – believing him to be a 15-year-old girl – with the intention of committing a sexual offence."

A Labour councillor with close links to Harriet Harman and Tessa Jowell was jailed for 15 months for attempting to groom an underage girl for sex.

Paedo ex-Councillor Caught Breaching Court Order after Phone Number Found by Murder Probe Police

Ex-councillor Friary, was caught breaching a court ban after his phone number cropped up in a double murder probe. John Friary's contact details were discovered as cops investigated Steven Robertson, 40, over the slaying of his ex Emma Robertson Coupland and her daughter Nicole Anderson.

But after officers asked to speak to the former Labour politician, 63, he flouted a strict order by wiping the internet history on his laptop and mobile. A sheriff heard Friary, who was jailed for 15 months in 2011 for grooming a girl of 15 online, claimed he'd had a sex worker staying with him who'd used his device to place an advert on classifieds site Craigslist. He alleged that the suspect had responded to this advert.

At court in Edinburgh, prosecutor Drew Long said of the fiend's Sexual Offences Prevention Order "It means he shouldn't delete any images or web browsing history. As part of an investigation into a double murder his phone number appeared."

The court heard there was erased content on an iPhone that couldn't be recovered and evidence the browsing history on the laptop was wiped.

Sheriff Matthew Auchincloss fined Friary, of the capital's Newhaven area, £600 after he'd earlier admitted "deleting" the web history.