A man tried to extort money from a pensioner he later accused of abusing him.
Seventy-seven-year-old William Brown is on trial at the High Court in Aberdeen facing a total of six charges involving four schoolboys.
He is accused of two counts of using lewd and libidinous behaviour, two charges of indecent assault and two charges of having an “unnatural carnal connection” with two of the complainers.
He denies all the allegations against him.
Yesterday, one of his alleged victims told jurors that he used to visit Brown around the time of 1980 at his flat in Kintore.
He said that Brown would often have a group of teenage boys at his home as he was good at fixing motorbikes.
The man, who can not be named for legal reasons, said on one occasion he stayed overnight at the accused’s flat. He said when he woke up in the middle of the night Brown was in bed with him and he was touching him.
The court heard that when the man, who was 14 at the time, realised what was happening he got out of bed and ran out of the house.
He said he never went back to the flat again.
However, during cross-examination, Brown’s defence counsel, advocate Jonathan Crowe, asked the man if he had ever confronted Brown about the alleged abuse.
The man replied: “Yes. I told him what he had done wasn’t right. No one got hurt. I did not know it was going to go to court at the time so I just wanted to give him a scare for what he had done to me.”
Mr Crowe put it to him that he demanded money from Brown and said that he told the pensioner if he did not pay him the cash he would go to the police.
The man accepted that he had done this but added: “It was never about the money. I just wanted to give him a scare. I just wanted him to see what it was like to feel scared like I had felt.”
Another man, who is now in his 50s, gave evidence yesterday during the second day of the trial and said he had been abused by Brown over a 20-year period.
He said he had lived with a physically abusive father who used to beat him and his siblings and said he felt “safe” when he was with Brown.
The man said that although he knew it was wrong for Brown to have sex with him, he would rather have lived with that than the pain caused by his father
He said despite the sexual abuse he looked at Brown, of 22 Dublin Quay, Irvine, as a father figure.
The trial continues.
