Criminal blames past on Welsh police chief who allegedly abused him

A hardened criminal broke down as he told a jury how he was sexually abused as a teenager by a police chief. The alleged victim, now in his 40s, claims that as a teenager in a care home, former North Wales Police Superintendent Gordon Anglesea grabbed him by the hair and forced him to perform a sex act while calling him "scum".

Describing himself as a "bad man" and "raving alcoholic", he said talking about his problems with other prisoners while in therapy in jail had forced him to face up to his crimes.

He claimed his criminal behaviour was because of the abuse he suffered as a child in North Wales care homes, Mold Crown Court heard on Monday (19 September).

He denied making up the allegations against Anglesea for money, after the defendant won £500,000 in libel damages for being falsely accused of sex abuse in the past.

Anglesea, 78, from Colwyn Bay, denies a count of indecent assault against the complainant, and two other counts of indecent assault and one count of buggery against another boy. His trial began last week.

Both complainants were aged 14 or 15 at the time of the alleged offences, between 1982 and 1987.

The witness, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claimed he was "systematically" abused in the 1980s while at the Bryn Alyn children's home in North Wales, run by John Allen, currently jailed for life for sexually abusing 19 youngsters in his care.

He claimed other men abused him, and on one occasion he was taken to a house in Mold, North Wales, where the incident with Anglesea is alleged to have taken place.

The prisoner, giving evidence in the witness box behind screens, said he had caused "havoc and mayhem" and created "hundreds" of victims, with convictions for more than 60 burglaries, four robberies, and drugs offences.

He told the jury: "I realised I need to change my ways, so I have put myself in therapy. One individual takes the group, the group picks a subject. The lads asked me questions. Why anti-authority? Why anti-social?

"Police officers, members of staff in care homes, they were people of authority and I have grown up hating authority ever since."

'I put the fear of God into victims'

The court heard he had been put in care at 14 and repeatedly ran away from homes, before committing crime and becoming an alcoholic.

He added: "When I go and commit a crime I put the fear of God into victims. I'm not proud of it, it's because of learnt behaviour. That's something that was done to me as a child. I have got that from my abuse."

But there were heated exchanges with Tania Griffiths, QC, defending Anglesea, who went through the complainant's long criminal record and suggested he was lying to try to get compensation from the defendant in the dock.

The witness said: "It's not me on trial, it's that paedophile over there. I have made mistakes in my life. Put yourself in a 14-year-old boy's shoes.

"I got systematically beat up on a daily basis by older kids, from the staff. You see that cycle of terrifying someone and put fear of God into someone to get what they want, that's my learnt behaviour. But today I'm not creating any victims. I'm not here to put an innocent man down."

Griffiths continued: "What you are telling is absolute lies."

The witness replied: "Not it's not. Why would I pick an innocent man and say he abused me?"

Griffiths replied: "Because you see him, a high-profile man in the press, following on from 1991. You knew that he won over half a million pounds in compensation from a libel when people falsely accused him of being an abuser?"

The witness replied: "I didn't know he had won so much, I knew he was in court for something. I know that man abused me. I'm not after compensation. I don't want a penny, all I want is justice."

At the time of the alleged offences, Anglesea was a police inspector based in Wrexham who ran a Home Office attendance centre where tearaway teenage boys would be given a military-style regime.

It is alleged he committed the offences against the other complainant at the centre.

The Bryn Alyn and Bryn Estyn children's homes, where John Allen and others abused youngsters, were both based nearby.

Anglesea denies all charges. The trial continues.