A 57-year-old Daniel Reed who is a former church youth leader from Hove has been charged with seven counts of sexual abuse in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Daniel Reed a former youth leader at Clarendon church in Hove faces four charges of indecent assault on a boy under the age of 16 years and three for indecent assaults on a man aged 16 or over. He allegedly met the boys at his home in Hangleton reports Premier Christian News
Reed was fired from his position in his early twenties and subsequently showed up at the house of one of the elders, John Hosier.
The prosecutor, Jason Sugarman told the jury at Hove Trial Center Crown Court that Reed has exposed them to pornographic movies and convinced them to wear boxers or silk shorts before taking advantage of them.
The first complaint, according to the evidence presented in court, came in August 2018 after a boy’s father reported his son’s sexual abuse to the police. Reed is accused of abusing the boy who now is a man when he was 14 in about 1987 or 1988.
The man kept his account of what transpired a secret until about 2000 or 2002 when he told his wife. He finally reported the alleged abuse to the police in 2018.
Sugarman claimed that one of the boys informed his parents what happened in 1990 but his father didn’t believe him and forced him to apologize to Reed over the phone.
Sugarman told the jury that “Sometime after Danny” was fired from church, “he turned up on his doorstep saying he had known he had done wrong.” “As a Christian, he wanted to repent, ask for forgiveness and have a fresh start. He did not elaborate about what he had done wrong.”
Reed however has denied all the charges levelled against him and the trial continues.