Businessman ‘abused girl, 12, after meeting in cricket pavilion’

♦ A morris-dancing businessman abused a 12-year-old for two years after meeting her at a cricket pavilion, a court heard.

The besotted girl lost her virginity to Clive Royales, it was alleged, and the pair went on to meet three times a week for sex, including on a Sunday after he dropped his wife and two children at church.

She met engineering boss Royales at a cricket club in 1998 at Heyside, near Oldham, Greater Manchester, while she was drunk on alcopops and he went on to abuse her at his workplace, the court was told.

Mr Royales, then aged 30, even promised her they would start a new life together aboard a boat moored off a Greek island, a jury heard.

The alleged victim, now married and in her 30s, said the pair chose Groovejet by Spiller and Sophie Ellis Bextor as “our song”.

Mr Royales bought the girl a mobile phone so they could contact each other and he saved his number in it as “Mr Floppy” in the hope no one could identify him, it was alleged.

The alleged abuse ended in 2000 after Mr Royales left his wife Gillian for another mistress.

But although the girl told loved ones, police were not called in until 2014 when the accuser was struck down by anxiety attacks and blamed them on the alleged liaisons she had years earlier with Mr Royales, now 50.

The woman, who cannot be named, told Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court: “When he left to go and live with another woman I was scared that it was my fault that I created this and he had left his wife because of what happened between us – I felt hurt.

“He made me feel special yet I was not special because I was not the only one. I still loved him.”

Mr Royales, from Springhead, Oldham, denies three charges of indecent assault.

The trial continues.