Retired police officer kept repeating ‘I’m sorry’ when confronted by alleged victim of sex abuse
WOMAN CLAIMS HE GROOMED AND ASSAULTED HER WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD AT THE AGE OF 16
A RETIRED police officer repeatedly apologised when a woman confronted him about sexually abusing her as a child, a court heard.
Former Humberside Police officer Bryan Calam, 71, is on trial at Hull Crown Court accused of grooming and abusing the girl when she was under 16 in the early 2000s.
Mr Calam, of Wood View, Swanland, denies five offences of indecent assault and three of indecency with a child.
Giving evidence from behind a screen on the second day of the trial, the complainant said she texted Mr Calam and asked him to come to a relative’s house because she wanted to confront him, and wrote what she wanted to say on a piece of paper.
She said Mr Calam called her on the way to ask who was at the address, then arrived and knocked on the door, although the relative did not want him in the house.
Asked by Claire Holmes, prosecuting, what was in the note, the woman said: “What you did to me as a child was wrong. You should never have done that. What you’ve done you should be in prison for.
“And what he said was, all he kept saying was, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’”
The complainant said she decided to report the alleged abuse “when all the Jimmy Savile stuff came out”. She said: “I thought s***, that’s me. I thought that shouldn’t happen to me.”
She had earlier dismissed claims from defence barrister Paul Genney that one occasion when she alleges Mr Calam had sex with her was a “fantasy” after a plan of the location was shown to the jury.
She had said Mr Calam was able to keep a lookout to check they were not disturbed while they were having sex.
“This is fantasy, isn’t it?” asked Mr Genney. “It’s absolutely impossible.”
“You can say it’s a lie when you haven’t seen it,” the woman said from behind the screen that shielded her from the packed public gallery.
She claimed on another occasion, Mr Calam’s wife, whom she said was a police officer who had worked in Special Branch, nearly caught her performing a sex act on Mr Calam.
Describing the conversation she claims took place between the Calams, she said: “[Mrs Calam] went ‘What are you doing’? And he went ‘What are you doing’? I thought ‘This is the end, it’s going to stop.’ But it didn’t.”
The woman claims she and Mr Calam had sex 20 to 30 times during the two-year period of the alleged abuse, although those allegations do not appear on the indictment for legal reasons, the court has heard.
Mr Genney told the woman she was “making it all up”, which she denied. On some occasions Mr Calam sat in the dock shaking his head, and twice called his solicitor to the back of court to speak to her while the complainant was giving evidence.
Opening the case on Monday, Miss Holmes said when the girl told Mr Calam she wanted the alleged abuse to stop, he “begged for one more time and said he might have to go to a prostitute”.
A former partner of the complainant told the court he remembered her disclosing the alleged abuse to him while they were at home one night.
He said: “She started to get upset and welling up and said she wanted to talk to me about something. She told me not to get upset.”
“What was it that she did tell you?” Miss Holmes asked.
The man said: “That Bryan had, when she was younger, sexually abused her.”
“Did she go into any detail about what the abuse consisted of?” Miss Holmes asked.
“No,” the man said. “That’s probably because I didn’t want to know at that point.”
The trial continues.