A man accused of sexually abusing and raping children and even threatening them if they revealed what he did told police he could not have done it because he was frigid about the idea of sex.
Nelson Crocker is on trial over 28 allegations of sexual assault, rape and attempted rape against children – boys and girls – who were aged 5 to 14 at the time of the alleged offences. Some of the charges he faces also include causing or inciting a girl and a boy under 13 to engage in sexual activity.
On the first day of what is expected to be a two-week trial at Truro Crown Court (Monday, January 6), Brian Fitzherbert, prosecuting, told the jury how Crocker, 26, of Penmare Terrace in Hayle, took advantage of his six victims at addresses in two Cornish town within the past 20 years.
Mr Fitzherbert said it was only when his first alleged victim plucked up the courage to speak out about what happened to her that more alleged victims came forward and spoke to the police.
Crocker denies all charges against him, claiming his alleged victims have made it all up and it was all lies. In police interviews over the various allegations, Crocker denied any wrongdoings and claimed that one of his alleged victims was 16 – the legal age of sexual consent – when he had intercourse with her.
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Mr Fitzherbert told the court: “All the complainants were children and none of them spoke out at the time when they were abused. For some of the complainants it was the knowledge that they were not the only person which caused them to come forward when they did.”
The court was told that Crocker was aged between 10 and 22 when he carried out the alleged offences, with the first complaints made during the first Covid lockdown.
The prosecuting barrister said that one of Crocker’s alleged victims was abused from the age of six for several years and that he forced her, as she told the police, to do “weird stuff” to him leaving her feeling “scared and confused”.
Mr Fitzherbert said the victim, who, like all the others, cannot be named for legal reasons, told the police in her interview that Crocker was “manipulative” and threatened her in the early years that if she ever spoke about it “he would go to jail and when he came out he would kill her parents and she would be taken into care in another part of the world”.
He added: “It was obviously an outlandish claim to make and she didn’t know how wrong what he was doing was.” He also told the court that for many years Crocker tried “to normalise the idea of sex” with his victims.
It was after his first alleged victim came forward that other people did too, including girls and boys who were allegedly also abused over a number of years while they too were aged between seven and 14.
“The prosecution’s case is that Mr Crocker had a sexual interest in children and acted on that interest,” Mr Fitzherbert.
The prosecutor said that in police interviews Crocker claimed all of it as lies from people who were “attention seeking” and wanted to mess up his life, adding that he “was frigid and scared of the idea of sex until he was older in life”.
The trial continues.
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