A retired senior police officer who is accused of child sex offences carried out during the 1980s told a jury that he had never behaved inappropriately towards boys.
Gordon Anglesea, 79, a former police superintendent, also denied involvement with men involved in a paedophile ring in north Wales.
Anglesea said he had “lived a nightmare” since his name was linked to child sexual abuse in a 1991 newspaper article. He won damages for libel but more than 20 years later was arrested and accused of four charges of sexual assault between 1982 and 1987 against two boys aged 14 or 15. He denies the charges.
During his trial at Mold crown court, in north Wales, one of the alleged victims claimed he was assaulted by Anglesea in the showers and changing room at an young offenders’ attendance centre in Wrexham.
The second person claims he was handed around “like a handbag” by a convicted paedophile known as John Allen, who owned a children’s home in Wrexham.
Anglesea, a former North Wales officer, told the jury he was “intensely angry” after a report headlined New Child Abuse Scandal appeared in a newspaper in 1991, which accused him of “retiring suddenly without explanation” and being a “frequent visitor” to care homes where children were sexually attacked.
Sitting in the witness box to give evidence, Anglesea told the court he had successfully sued the paper for libel and won £375,000 in damages. “I was appalled when I read that article. Intensely angry. It upset my wife as well.” He said life was “never the same again” and that his “nightmare” continued.
In the 1980s Anglesea ran a Home Office attendance centre where troubled teenagers would be given a military-style regime of physical exercise, drill parades, and woodwork classes on Saturday afternoons. It is alleged he made the youngsters do naked sit-ups and squat thrusts, and that he loitered around the showers “with a smirk on his face”.
Three of the alleged sex assaults took place at the attendance centre against one complainant. His other alleged victim told the court he was first sexually assaulted by Allen, while in care and living at the Bryn Alyn children’s home in Wrexham. But on one occasion, at a house in Mold, the defendant, he alleged, “grabbed him by the hair” and forced him to perform oral sex on him, calling him “scum” and telling the boy he had the “power to send him away”.
The prosecution alleged there was a “connection” between Allen, now serving life for child sex offences, who ran the children’s homes (Bryn Estyn and Bryn Alyn) and the defendant.
From the witness box, Anglesea denied being a “frequent visitor” to the children’s homes, saying he only ever went there on official business to give police cautions to boys for thieving and petty crime, and that he was always accompanied by other staff.
He also denied seeking out the job involving working with teenage boys, telling the jury he took the role because someone else dropped out and his boss persuaded him.
He said he ran the attendance centre on “military” lines under orders from the Home Office, and no differently from other similar institutions for young offenders.
Anglesea, of Colwyn Bay, north Wales, also denied being involved with Allen or other men linked to a paedophile ring in north Wales involving children’s homes.
Tania Griffiths QC, defending, asked: “You have heard these allegations made against you. Have you ever behaved inappropriately to any boys?” The defendant, who retired after serving 34 years in the police, replied: “None whatsoever, to any child.”
The trial continues.
