Daughter backs ‘abusive’ mother
Elder sister accuses two siblings of making up stories of being beaten
A WOMAN yesterday rubbished her sister’s claims that their mother abused them as children.
Alice Wynne-Willson, a 45-year- old Greenpeace executive, told a court there was ‘no way’ her siblings had suffered such cruelty.
Her mother Susan, 69, is on trial for historical child cruelty – two of her children accuse her of punching, kicking and biting them at their £700,000 London home.
But Alice said her sister Rosa Aguelo de Guero, 42, was a liar and former crack addict who was blaming their parents for her own failures.
And she also dismissed the evidence of adopted brother Dan, 40, a deputy headmaster who told the trial their mother would hold his head under water to stop him screaming.
Giving evidence at Blackfriars Crown Court, Alice said that Rosa had been upset at losing their idyllic life at a large country house in North Yorkshire.
The family moved to London after the business set up by their 71- year- old father Peter, a renowned lighting engineer for Pink Floyd and U2, went bankrupt.
The daily abuse allegedly inflicted by Wynne-Willson included stuffing soiled underwear into her children’s mouths and wrapping them in urine soaked sheets if they wet the bed.
When asked about this evidence of abuse, Alice replied: ‘ This is something I absolutely do not recognise. The picture that has been painted of our childhood is so significantly and dramatically different, that is why I am here.’ Asked by Emma Goodall, defending, to tell jurors about her younger sister, she said: ‘She can achieve absolutely everything she sets her mind to. She is extremely, very, manipulating – if she is against you it is very worrying.
‘Rosa feels cheated in life and she feels she should’ve got more, deserves more, dreams of a lot more. She blames it on mum.
‘At first she blamed my dad, guilt tripping my dad so badly he was saying “I have been a bad father”. She put so much pressure on him, saying all her unhappiness was his fault. In Rosa’s life she wants to blame someone else.’
Alice, who lives in Brussels, said she and Rosa were involved in the early 1990s rave scene and had organised big parties.
She said when Rosa was under the influence of drugs she would lie constantly and look to ‘get money constantly’.
Wynne-Willson, of Gospel Oak in north-west London, denies five counts of child cruelty and three counts of causing actual bodily harm between 1979 and 1993.
The trial continues.