A former SNP councillor who assaulted teenagers and tried to rape one boy has been jailed.
Mark Kerr was seen as a ‘mentor’ by one of his victims before he took advantage and abused him, a court heard.
He was found guilty of nine charges involving offences that took place between May 2012 and May 2020 in Lanarkshire.
The 40-year-old committed most of the crimes before he was elected to represent the Kilsyth ward in Croy in 2017.
Jurors heard how a target looked up to him as an openly gay man while he was coming out himself.
Kerr touched him sexually for the first time when he was just 15-years-old at a disused quarry.
On a different occasion in 2015, the boy was asleep in Kerr’s house when he woke up to the predator trying to rape him.
The victim, who is now in his mid-20s, said: ‘I froze once I understood what was happening. I could not control my body. It did not allow me to do anything.’
He went on to publicly confront Kerr at knifepoint in the presence of his mother, saying: ‘Tell my mum what you done to me.’
Another boy said he was targeted from around 2012 and touched inappropriately.
One one occasion after explicitly describing sex acts, Kerr said to him: ‘Don’t knock it until you have tried it.’
Kerr also molested a boy in a tent on a camping trip in Croy. He was accused of raping a second boy on the same trip but acquitted of this charge.
However, the High Court in Glasgow found Kerr guilty of sexually assaulting the rape accuser in 2014 after he groped him and sent him graphic messages.
His most recent victim was a boy who went to a food bank set up to help people during the 2020 lockdown.
He told jurors: ‘I thought he was a nice guy. I do not see that now.’
Kerr denied the charges against him, insisting he had been the victim of a campaign to brand him a ‘local nonce’.
In often graphic detail, he insisted he was physically unable to do some of what was alleged, claiming he was ‘a 40 year-old virgin’.
But the court accepted the prosecution dubbing Kerr as a ‘predator hiding in plain sight’ and a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’.
The High Court in Paisley jailed Kerr for six years on Friday after the judge said he was ‘lacking remorse and empathy’ for the victims.
He was also put on the sex offenders list for life.
Detective inspector Colin Moffat of Police Scotland’s National Child Abuse Investigation Unit said: ‘Kerr was in a position of responsibility and trust as a local politician but he prayed on teenagers, one of whom he met at an official function.
‘He befriended them and betrayed them.’
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