Man's horror at sexual assault charge (From Worcester News)

Darren Purchase sex offences trial latest

5:07pm Thursday 24th January 2013 in News

A Worcester man has told a jury he was "horrified" when he was arrested on a charge of sexually assaulting a young boy when he was a teenager in the 1980s.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, faces one sexual assault charge as a co-defendant with Darren Purchase.
Purchase, aged 44, of Hayfield Close, St John's, has denied 21 sex offence charges including rape, buggery and indecent assault from 1984 to 2009. The alleged victims were four women, four girls and a boy.
The co-accused denies one charge of indecent assault on the boy, then aged 12 or 13, between 1986 and 1988. The boy claims he was assaulted in his bedroom by both of the accused.
The court was told the co-accused had a string of previous convictions but had never been charged with a sex offence.
He said he had met Purchase when they were both on a Youth Training Scheme in the 1980s and they became friendly because of a shared interest in motorbikes. Purchase had a bike and would sometimes let him ride it, he said.
He told Worcester Crown Court he and Purchase had sniffed glue together once or twice after he was introduced to it from the fumes of the powerful adhesive used to laminate table tops on the YTS scheme.
He said he had been to the boy's house on several occasions with Purchase because they knew another member of the family. But he had hardly spoken to the boy and had never been inside his bedroom because no-one was allowed upstairs at all.
He said he did not discuss sex with Purchase and did not know if he had pornographic magazines. He said Purchase was "bikes mad and girls mad" but he was only interested in motorbike magazines.
They were friends for about two years as teenagers, he told the court, but then he went to prison. When he came out, he saw Purchase again for a while but they drifted apart. He said he had not seen Purchase for 27 years, except on one occasion when  he had briefly bumped into him in a Chinese takeaway.
He was “in shock” when he was arrested in September, 2011, and the allegation was put to him.
"I never went in the bedroom," he said. "It never happened."
The trial continues.