Judge ‘looked the other way as wife molested a child’
A COURT of Appeal judge ‘looked the other way’ as his wife sexually abused a child for nearly a decade, a court heard yesterday.
Lady Lavinia Nourse, 77, the widow of eminent property and tax expert Sir Martin Nourse, is accused of abusing the boy in the 1980s.
Nourse faces 17 charges covering a nineyear period – five of indecent assault and 12 of indecency with a child. They all involve the same person. A recording was played in court yesterday where the alleged victim had a conversation with a woman who knew him when he was a child.
Referring to Nourse, he said: ‘I think the root of my problem was that I was sexually abused.’ He claims her husband, who died in 2017 aged 85, ‘looked the other way’ while the offences took place.
The complainant went on to say that Nourse, of Newmarket, Suffolk, ‘screwed me up’. The abuse led to difficulties in his marriage, he added, which led to him confiding in his wife about what had happened.
He said he was ‘trying to work things through but it got to such a point that I had to admit to what happened to me when I was younger’.
He said he had ‘carried the shame’ of the abuse throughout his childhood.
Looking directly at Nourse, he added: ‘Through therapy and other stuff growing up, I realised that the shame I carried for this was not mine to bear. ‘It belonged to the woman sitting over there who sexually abused me throughout the childhood. It’s her shame.’
The bombshell claim was made on the second day of the trial at Peterborough’s Nightingale Court.
The alleged victim said he wanted Nourse to ‘ take responsibility’ for her actions. ‘ I wanted her to beg for my forgiveness and make amends. She did none of those things and I went to police,’ he added.
Nourse, who was interviewed by officers in 2019 after the allegations came to light, ran a PR agency which organised the premieres of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express and Phantom of the Opera in London and New York. It was also involved with the Queen’s 60th birthday celebrations.
The court also heard that Nourse bought her alleged victim a copy of Penthouse magazine containing nude pictures of singer Madonna.
Cambridge- educated Sir Martin had a distinguished legal career which included taking silk aged just 38.
He became a Chancery High Court judge ten years later and was 52 when he joined the Court of Appeal.
Nourse denies all of the charges. The case continues.