A man just received seven years in the slammer after pleading guilty of blackmailing two men he had anonymous sex with at a park in Worcester, England.
24-year-old Lee Taylor’s (pictured) strategy was simple: He’d hideout in the men’s bathroom at Gheluvelt Park. Another man would enter the facility. The two would have sex. Afterwards, Taylor would threaten either to reveal the men’s secrets to their families or accuse them of rape unless they forked over £100 ($150 U.S.).
According to court documents, the first incident occurred on November 12 of last year. Taylor met a married man in Gheluvelt Park. They did the nasty. Then Taylor requested a ride home.
“As they drove off, Taylor asked his victim for money for what had happened or he would make sure his family and his employer would know,” prosecutor Patrick Sullivan told the court.
How about we take this to the next level?
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The man managed to get out of paying Taylor by tricking him. He drove a random house and told the 24-year-old that it was his home. As they headed up the front walkway, the victim lied and said he had forgotten his keys. Then he jumped back into the vehicle and drove off.
A similar incident happened on November 20. Taylor hooked up with a guy in Gheluvelt Park then asked for a ride home. In the car, he demanded £100 in exchange for keeping quiet. The victim drove to an ATM and paid him the cash.
This week, Taylor pleaded guilty to two charges of blackmail.
Taylor’s lawyer, Jason Aris, said his client was homeless and didn’t have a job, so extorting money from innocent victims was his own means for survival. He promised he was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again. The only problem? This has happened before.
Taylor just finished serving four-and-a-half years in jail for the exact same crime. He was released less than a week before committing the same offenses again.
A judge sentenced him to seven more years behind bars, telling the young man, “There needs to be a deterrent not just for you but for others.”
The judge also issued a restraining order against Taylor, banning him from entering Gheluvelt Park indefinitely.
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Low Country Boy
How about banning him from any public park? Just saying . . .
Zekester
I don’t think his victims are completely innocent but that doesn’t excuse his crime.
aliengod
He’s guilty of a crime apparently. But is it really a serious enough offense (he swindled two men out of less that $300) that he should spend over 11 years in prison? That completely changes the course of a persons life.
Large Marge
indeed aliengod. 11 years over $300 dollars? Methinks thar be some homophobia in that judge.
It barely even qualifies as blackmail (poor sod is a lousy blackmailer). It’s more like payment for services rendered.
The poor do the time while the ‘rich’ get off with a fine, as usual.
This dude definitely did wrong, but dang… he got you off… you could at least throw him a hunnert!
Why weren’t the johns arrested after admitting a crime themselves? and why would they even bring this to the police attention when such a tiny sum would have solved their problem.. now their wives.. or perhaps ex-wives know anyway. Jeez, the only person here who is happy is the person screaming… ‘but it’s the principle of the thing’… and a prosecutor who also hates the gay.
Large Marge
Case in point.. Lindsey Lohan.. if she were a ‘normal’ person, she’d have done years. Instead she got effectively 10 days and protective custody.. and she’s an actual criminal. It’s not like these men didn’t have their jollies.
I just wonder who and why they notified the authorities.. over a hundred and fifty dollars or so each.
If I was ‘married’, that’d be a perfectly fine price to pay to make an inconvenience go away.
Captain Obvious
$150? Really?
I can’t.
Billy Budd
I would just pay him and forget about it. Who wants to put a miserable person in jail because of a theft of less than 300 bucks? Services rendered, that is what happened.
Arcamenel
He got the long sentence because it wasn’t his first time pulling this.
stanhope
At least he’ll get follow up training in jail and get the chance to perfect his technique. Dumb ass, he could just go on Craig’s list as prison trade and get double the money. LOL Wear the prison jumpsuit and he’d have enough money for Kanye’s fashions. LOL
jason smeds
There are LOTS of married men who fool around with other guys in toilets, behind trees, and at rest-stops. Even though these men are married to women, they are driven by the male sex drive to have experiences with other men who, of course, have a similar sex drive.
Keep in mind that women often stop having sex with their husbands after the kids have been born. To her, sex becomes a chore. Women also don’t have the high and constant sex drive of men, and thus she is less matched to a man than are other men.
Men match each other perfectly in terms of their sex drives regardless of their sexual orientation.
Mykaels
The man was sentenced to 4.5 years for blackmail, which is a serious crime. When he got out of prison, he immediately committed the exact same crime. Thus he was sentenced to a longer term, just like here in the states.
Whether or not you think THIS case is serious is moot, blackmail is a serious crime. Had he blackmailed a poor widower or politician for $11,000 I am sure everyone would change their tune, but whether $300 or $30,000, blackmail is blackmail.
sportyguy1983
I am not having any sympathy for these “victims”. There are consequences to irresponsible behavior.
vive
Almost twelve years in prison for a homeless person for a series of nonviolent survival crimes involving relatively small amounts of money. When whole neighborhoods in London are allowed to be bought up by the Russian Mob and other international financial criminals.
It seems like something out of Dickens.
vive
@Mykaels, so you think the first 4.5 years were proportionate? Do you think it did any good? If not, why do you think the next seven are going to do any good? Why do you think he committed the same crime again? Do you have any idea what it is to be homeless?
Giancarlo85
@jason smeds: You still spewing out that misogynist bullshit again?
Mike G
@vive: Oh, yeah, this guy is the perfect poster-boy for the downtrodden proletariat…
If he’d been honestly prostituting himself, I’d fully sympathize. (And he wouldn’t be going back to jail for 7 more years even if he’d been caught.) Hell, if he’d just stolen the other guys’ wallets after their pants were down, I’d have some sympathy (assuming he is actually homeless and not eligible for the dole.) And once again, he probably wouldn’t be going back to jail for 7 more years.
But threatening to try to destroy other people’s lives? Within a week of being released from jail for doing the exact same thing? Sorry, no dice. Maybe this time he’ll talk to his fellow inmates and get a few tips on diversifying his criminal repertoire…
As for the comments about the judge’s and/or prosecutor’s being anti-gay, I don’t see how that fits. If anyone here was anti-gay, it looks like the perp, to me…
NoCagada
” He drove a random house”
WOW! HE DROVE A HOUSE?!?
Saint Law
@jason smeds: Lots of guys do ‘fool around’ with other men. Men that is, which rules you out.
Belittling women out of frustration with your own lack of virility is not a good look, Miss Thing.
jwtraveler
@vive: We all know that someone who steals $150 is far more likely to go to prison than someone who steals $150 million. That’s not an excuse for this guy. It took less than a week for him to go back to the crime that got him locked up for 4 1/2 years. Is 7 years the appropriate punishment for stupidity?
Saint Law
The guy seems like a right nasty piece of work, but as has been pointed out – by aliengod, no less! – his sentence is ridiculously punitive.
darian
@jason smeds: Haha wait wait let me guess somewhere in your comment you meant to say that women don’t want there men to go to parks without then because it they do they lose their power over them? Please stop blaming women for the actions of cowardly closet cases.
dustashed
I guess I would be in the minority who think he got what he deserved. There is just something about extortion that rubs me the wrong way. And it wasn’t the first time, so yeah..
And it is no simple extortion, he threatened to destroy the lives of the people he is extorting money from and the lives of their families. Granted that those people are no saints to begin with, but that just doesn’t mitigate his crime in my eyes.
scotshot
@Zekester: Should they be guilty of having sex?
scotshot
@dustashed: Agreed. I was born in a much different era. At times after someone was outed, they’d lose their job, their homes and their families shunned them. They could go to jail for simply being gay or for being in a gay bar. Suicide quite often was a viable option.
This is the problem of youth who don’t know history of their culture and the people who suffered and died for their freedom.
BGinBigD
Sooo, I guess Mr. Taylor won’t be extorting any more men for sex for a while, but he’ll still be having plenty of homosexual sex! And the court thinks it’s punishing him??
edwardnvirginia
WHAT! Isn’t the sort of storyline that gets a big laugh in the typical Hollywood made ‘gay’ movie, and the typical TV ‘gay’ series, or ‘gay reality’ show? And isn’t this the sort of self-serving behavior that gets endorsed by wide margins of commentators in these blogs?
vive
@jwtraveler: “Is 7 years the appropriate punishment for stupidity?”
I would say no, it is not. Even that bastion of conservative jurisprudence, the U.S. Supreme Court, considers stupidity a mitigating circumstance, prohibiting executions of mentally challenged people. This guy is quite obviously mentally not quite there.
Mike G
@vive: Oh, dear God. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, “stupidity” has never been, and is not now, equated with “cognitive disability.” By anyone, anywhere. Certainly not by the US Supreme Court, at any time in history, under leadership any Chief Justice.
I’m not saying 7 years isn’t a long time, maybe too long, but on the other hand, I’m really not at all sure what the appropriate punishment should be in a case like this, involving a clearly unrepentant recidivist preying on people he thought vulnerable.
Maybe carefully supervised parole would’ve worked better the first time, but if 4 1/2 years in jail didn’t suggest to him a different course of action after his release, I’m not sure what would. And it’s certainly not like he wasn’t given a clue what might happen if he did it again, having been given serious jail time after his first attempts…
Maude
Okay, I must be missing something.
These are two strangers having sex in a public place. Been there, done that.
After doing the deed, you leave, and never see the other guy again.
…or you kindly give him a lift…..so how does he get your personal info?
The only way the blackmailer gets to blackmail his victim is, if he knows his correct name and address….So why did the victim give him that info?