Woman aged 59 cleared of having sex with boy, 14
A WOMAN of 59 was yesterday cleared of having sex with a 14-year-old boy during a holiday in Spain.
Gail Dickinson stood trial after the boy’s grandmother claimed to have seen them together on the balcony of an apartment.
But a jury yesterday delivered a unanimous ‘not proven’ verdict on the charges of engaging and instigating sexual activity with a minor, and not guilty on two related charges.
Dickinson, from Glenrothes, Fife, was on holiday with the boy and his family in San Antonio, Ibiza, in June last year when the alleged incident took place.
She smiled as she left Dunfermline Sheriff Court after the verdict, saying: ‘Justice has been served.’
The boy’s grandmother had claimed she witnessed the alleged sexual encounter through the curtains of her bedroom.
Dickinson said intercourse did not take place but when pressed by prosecutors she said the boy forced himself on her as she sat looking at holiday snaps on her tablet. She told jurors the teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was ‘obsessed’ with having sex with her and it left her ‘terrified’.
During the trial, the teenager’s grandmother said she heard Dickinson tell the boy: ‘You’re a handsome boy, you’re lovely.’
She claimed she split up the pair when she found them in the living room, with her grandson partially naked. After telling him to go to bed, she later heard whispering from the balcony. When she looked through a gap in the curtains, she saw the pair having sex, she claimed.
She then told the court she saw Dickinson perform a sex act on the boy, adding: ‘I could tell from his face he was enjoying it. From his expression he looked as if all his birthdays had come at once.’
The boy’s grandmother told the trial she was too shocked to intervene. His mother and brother were also in the flat at the time. The teenager gave evidence via video link, saying he had been out drinking with his mother and Dickinson in the evening.
Admitting he was ‘pretty drunk’ when they returned to the flat, he told how ‘Gail was coming on to me... She was touching my shoulders and legs’.
He explained that he went to bed but later went to see Dickinson, who led him out on to the balcony where, he claimed, they had sex. Explaining how he felt, he said: ‘I was stunned it happened. When I woke up in the morning I felt pretty rubbish. I regretted it. It wouldn’t have happened if I was sober.’
Dickinson said in her evidence that the boy chased her on to the balcony of the apartment and ‘tried and tried again’ to have full sex but she fought him off.
She denied she engaged in sexual activity with the boy by kissing him on the lips, touching him on the body and engaging in sexual intercourse.
After the verdict, she was hugged by a family member. Relatives of the boy were visibly upset.