Teenage boys in Newcastle United’s youth football teams were sexually abused by a coach who was working for the club as a “driver, kit man and gopher”, a jury has been told.
George Ormond is alleged to have abused boys while they were staying at a hotel organised by Newcastle United, the prosecuting barrister, Sharon Beattie, told Newcastle crown court.
Ormond’s role was to pick up the boys or drop them off at the hotel, and he had been told by the club not to spend time with the boys there, Beattie said.
However, alleged victims of abuse and other former youth players will testify that Ormond befriended and made himself “almost indispensable” to them, and that he indecently assaulted boys while engaging in highly sexualised conversations and conduct with them, including watching pornographic videos, and walking around the hotel naked.
Ormond is charged with sexual offences against 19 victims over a 25-year period, in the Newcastle United youth setup, as a coach at a north-east boys’ football club, and as a helper on the Duke of Edinburgh scheme in a Newcastle school. The charges are 36 counts of indecent assault, one of indecency, and one of buggery, all alleged to have been committed between 1973 and 1998.
Beattie said the prosecution’s case is that the evidence the jury will hear
“establishes George Ormond’s disposition and predilection in engaging with young people in a wholly inappropriate way and demonstrates his predilection for seeking sexual gratification from the young”.
One alleged victim will testify that he was asleep in the room he shared with another boy, and woke up to find Ormond in his bed, sexually abusing him.
Beattie, explaining why that victim did not speak out at the time, said: “If anybody had told him that this had happened to them, he would have wondered why they didn’t shout or say something. But it’s different when it happens to you. He froze and didn’t say anything at that age. He didn’t know what to do to make it stop.”
Other victims have described feeling embarrassed, ashamed and guilty, worried that they might be the target of teasing or bullying if other boys found out, and that Ormond manipulated their ambitions to make it as professional footballers. Beatty told the court that one man who was allegedly abused while playing in the Newcastle United youth system was worried that given Ormond’s trusted role, “if he said something he would have been out of the club”.
Ormond denies all the charges.
The first two of the alleged victims to give evidence in the trial recalled a rule at the boys football club where Ormond was a coach, that the boys were prohibited from wearing underwear when changed to play.
If Ormond or the head coach, Dick Almond, found the boys wearing underwear, they punished them by beating them with a training shoe or slipper on their bare backsides.
The second witness said Ormond sexually assaulted him under his shorts while giving him a pre-match rub with liniment. The man, who said as a boy he “lived” for football, broke down in the witness box when recalling Ormond sexually assaulting him at a residential outdoor activities centre used by the boys’ club. “It was a place I grew to hate,” he said.
Rebecca Trowler QC, defending Ormond, cross-examining the first alleged victim, challenged him that he had made up the allegation in the 1970s that Ormond indecently assaulted him, and was maintaining that “fib” in court.
The complainant responded: “I take offence to your comments, to be honest with you. Do you think a 57-year-old man needs to take two days off work and listen to you call us a liar? No.”
The trial continues and is scheduled to last until 29 June.
