The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Parents give evidence in defence of their son
Girl’s claims refuted by mother and father
The family of a martial arts expert accused of grooming and abusing underage schoolgirls have given evidence in his defence.
Gary Goodrum’s father Colin, 64, and mother Jeanette, 65, took to the witness box to refute suggestions from one girl that she stayed with the family for a year, claiming she was only with them for a month.
His parents also rejected the girl’s claims Goodrum’s father had knocked on the accused’s bedroom door in the middle of the night to tell them to keep the noise down while they were having sex.
The jury has heard evidence the accused indecently assaulted one 15 year-old with a set of nunchuck sticks, sexually assaulted a 14-year-old by grabbing her breasts and groped and performed sex acts with a series of teenage girls in his car and at his academy premises in an industrial estate in Dalgety Bay, at an annexe of Inverkeithing High School and at other addresses in Fife.
Mr Goodrum insisted the girl allegedly involved in the nunchucks incident had left school and was therefore over 16 when she came to stay at their then-home in Dalgety Bay.
Giving evidence at the High Court in Livingston yesterday, he rejected the girl’s claim that she’d stayed in his house for about a year as “totally inaccurate”.
Mr Goodrum said two of the complainers who claimed to have visited their family home at The Spinneys had never been in the house.
He confirmed a third complainer had attended his son’s wedding.
Under cross-examination by advocate depute Stephen Mccloy, Mr Goodrum insisted that most of his three sons’ friends in the late 90s and early 2000s had been male.
He said the only exceptions were the boys’ girlfriends. He added: “I lived there. I would have known if groups of girls came to the house.”
Mrs Goodrum also testified the girl who claimed she had been indecently assaulted with a martial arts weapon had stayed with them for just four weeks.
She said: “She was in not very happy position. Her mother didn’t want her, Her father was away, she didn’t get on with her sister and she wasn’t getting fed.
“Whatever she needed I had to buy for her. I bought her underwear because she didn’t have any.”
Asked if the complainer had become “part of the family” for the duration of her stay she replied: “Yes.”
After the four weeks passed, she said the girl’s father came to the house and picked her up.
She said she later accepted a friend request from the girl on Facebook and got a message from her asking how she was, but she said she did not respond.
Goodrum, 38, of Corsiehill, Perth, is charged with seven counts of lewd, indecent and libidinous behaviour towards under-age girls in Dalgety Bay and Inverkeithing between April 1998 and March 2009.
He is also accused of indecently assaulting the 15-year-old girl between 1999 and 2000 and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old kickboxer between May and October 2016.
Goodrum denies all the allegations. The trial continues.