A BUSINESSMAN who led a double life is now serving his second prison sentence for sex offences involving children.

Graeme Gaston, prosecuting, told York Crown Court, that police were handed a child’s memory stick containing recordings of James Edward Milner performing a sex act while discussing how to sexually abuse a different child with a second man over the internet.

The child was not connected to Milner, who had already served a six-month prison sentence imposed in 2008 for five offences of possessing sexual images of children.

The Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, told him: “It might have been thought your arrest, your conviction, your imprisonment and public shame in 2008 would have deterred you from any repetition, but sadly, it did not do so.”

Milner, 51, of Scrayingham, Malton, pleaded guilty to six offences of possessing indecent images of children and two of distributing sexual images of children. The charges involved both the pictures he told North Yorkshire Police about and the recordings on the memory stick.

He was jailed for 21 months, put on the sex offenders’ register for ten years and made subject to a sexual offences prevention order banning him from using the internet without police-monitored controls in place.

Judge Ashurst told him: “You are an intelligent man with a supportive family and with a degree of success in business. You have many of the advantages not open to many of the defendants who appear before these courts, but to an extent it appears you have lived something of a double life.”

For Milner, Taryn Turner said he had a problem or personality difficulty that needed addressing. His wife was standing by him and other family would run the business while he was in jail.