Widow lent bank card to ‘help couple out’

Former police officers deny they took his mother’s cash without permission

An elderly widow whose son and daughter-in-law are accused of embezzling more than £85,000 from her told a court yesterday that she had not put a limit on how much they could spend using her bank card.

Gladys Rough, 86, said she gave the card to her son and daughter-in-law, who are both former police officers, to buy groceries for her.

She told Stirling Sheriff Court that she told Andrew and Jean Rough that they could take money from her account “if they were short” but added that the offer meant “nothing big, just to help them out. There was a limit to what I meant by anything. I didn’t mean big, big sums.”.

Defence advocate Lewis Kennedy, for Andrew Rough, 58, said: “I’m suggesting that you never made that limit clear.”

Mrs Rough, who gave evidence by video link replied: “That’s correct.”

She also agreed with Mr Kennedy that much of her money had come from a Criminal Injuries Compensation Board payout to her husband, also called Andrew, a retired forester, who died last year.

She said the payout followed an attack on Andrew Rough senior by her elder son Adrian, an alcoholic, who was never prosecuted for the alleged incident because of lack of evidence.

Mr Kennedy asked: “Would you accept that, for the first time in your life you were in a position to be generous, to spoil your family?” Mrs Rough agreed. However, she said that it would have “angered and tormented” her husband if any money had gone to Adrian.

Andrew and Jean Rough, of Alloa, Clackmannanshire, deny embezzling a total of £85,705 from Mrs Rough, having been entrusted with her financial affairs.

It is alleged they took the money between September 2010 and July 2015.

Mr Kennedy said Mrs Rough had given the money as “a gift” to Andrew and Jean.

He said: “It was only ever done with your consent, your permission, your blessings. I suggest that every one of these cash withdrawals and card purchases were signed off by you.”

Mrs Rough replied: “What I mean was, if it was really needed, not out of pleasure.”

Earlier, when prosecutor Sarah Lumsden asked her how she felt about discovering that thousands of pounds had been withdrawn from her account, she said that she would have been “pretty sick” had she known about it at the time.

She said: “It makes me feel stupid now. I never gave it a thought, I trusted them all down the line.”

But when questions were raised about her account after Stirling Council checked it to see if she was liable to pay towards care costs, “there was trouble”.

She said: “Jean threw my card on the table and said, ‘There’s your bank card back’, and walked out. She was annoyed. Andrew said, ‘We’re not thieves, we’re not taking your money’.”

She said that after that, Andrew had been “pretty angry”.

The trial continues.