Children’s home head ‘used to spank me’
WITNESS TELLS COURT HE WAS ABUSED AS TEENAGER
A WITNESS wiped away tears as he told a jury “I had nothing” as he spoke about leaving a boys’ home where he was allegedly abused.
He had lived at the Hazelwood home, on Mount Hooton Street in Forest Fields, but when it came time to leave, he didn’t want to because, he said, “my mum didn’t want me”.
He has described various sexual incidents involving the accused, former head of the home, Michael Robinson, now 65.
As far as he could remember, he said he had never spoken about the alleged abuse, until police contacted him when was he out fishing.
The jury were taken back to the time of his childhood when at the age of 16 or 17, he had “nobody” in the world.
Robinson allegedly abused him and three other children without interference from other staff, a jury at Nottingham Crown Court has heard.
Now grown-up and with health problems of his own, the witness described his life at the home as a teenager and an incident at Robinson’s house when he was told to go there and to wait up in his bedroom.
“He used to spank me,” said the witness, who cannot be identified due to the nature of the allegations.
The boy would have to take off clothing and bend over Robinson’s lap and, he said, this would “reduce me to tears”.
Rebecca Herbert, prosecuting, asked him: “On average, how many times would he actually hit your bottom?”
The man replied “three or four times”, and the spanking episodes finished when Robinson broke down, started crying and hugged him.
Mrs Herbert asked if the defendant had said anything and the man said “just things, you know, he didn’t want to do it”.
And she asked him what sort of things he might have done wrong for “these episodes to happen” and the man said it depended what had happened at school or if he had argued with someone in the home or been fighting.
The alleged physical chastisements happened “a few times”, he said, and “I was a bit of a lad... not to the point I should have been spanked”.
The witness also claimed that, on another occasion, Robinson took photographs of him in some swimming trunks.
And he recalled Robinson allegedly taking photos of him in the bathroom when he was naked lying on the floor.
He told the jury: “He came into the bathroom and said to me ‘have you ever had a soap massage?’ and I said ‘no’ and he told me to ‘get out of the bath and lie on this towel.’ He started wiping soap over me, massaging it in”. The man, who was taken into care when he was 14, claimed Robinson then performed a sexual act on him. Pamela Brain, representing the defendant, asked: “Michael Robinson was quite a fat man at that stage?”
The man replied: “That’s correct”. And she asked; “Was there really that much room on the bathroom floor for you to be lying down and Mr Robinson to be there as well”. The man told her “yes”. She also asked him about the spanking and other alleged incidents of a sexual nature he claimed happened. She questioned if all those incidents were said to have taken place in the bedroom and he replied “yes”.
“Are you making this up?”, she asked, but he told her “I wouldn’t be sitting here if they didn’t happen”. Robinson, of Hermit Lane, Wortley, Barnsley, denies 26 charges of indecency dating from the 1980s.
■ The trial continues
I was a bit of a lad... not to the point I should have been spanked.
Witness