The husband of a woman allegedly raped by her teacher more than 20 years ago told a jury how he heard him begging her not to go to the police.
The woman, who was 15 when the assault is alleged to have taken place, did go to the police and her alleged attacker, Malcolm Nicholson, is on trial at Liverpool Crown Court .
It is claimed that the victim had had “a crush” on her science teacher Nicholson and he took advantage of her vulnerablility and told her he “wanted to be her first”.
Nicholson, 46, who taught at St Edmund Arrowsmith school, then in Prescot , at the time of the allegations, denies rape and indecent assault in the early 1990s .
Lee Bonner, prosecuting, told the jury that Nicholson, who now lives in Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough, allegedly committed the two offences at his then home in Allerton.
The husband of the alleged victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, told the jury that he had been shocked and angry when she revealed what had happened to her 21 years before.
She told him how Nicholson had forced himself on her twice, once at his Allerton home and once at his parents’ home in Middlesbrough. The court has heard that he does not face any charges about the alleged Middlesbrough incident.
The husband said: “She said she had loved him and he would take her for drinks and meals. I was numb and confused and I was angry with her. I asked why are you telling me now, what are you going to achieve.
“She said she had seen something on the news about Jimmy Savile thing…people were coming out saying something had happened. She said, ‘I’m like them’. She had bottled it up all this time, that is what had happened to her.”
The husband told how, in 2013, his wife told him she had found Nicholson, who was teaching in Holland, on Twitter following a school reunion.
He said he listened in on a conversation on speakerphone when his wife called Nicholson.
He said he heard her tell Nicholson: “I have issues when I was 15. You knew I wasn’t ready for sex, aren’t you sorry for what you did?”
The husband told jurors: “[Nicholson] said, “I am sorry for having sex with you when you were 15’. She asked him why he did he do it and he said it was his own insecurities. She said she wanted to go to the police.
“He said, ‘Oh God no, I’ll lose everything, my job, wife, kids, please don’t’.”
Later in the conversation “he mentioned about making her life better and to change things and make her life better and started talking stupid figures of money; £200,000,” the husband said.
The court has heard that Nicholson paid £8,000 into her bank account which she and her husband burnt a few days later in the back garden.
She told the court: “It was blood money, it was money to keep me quiet. I never asked for it in the first place. It was his money and I wanted to destroy it. It was money he had earned and paid to me. It was great burning that money. It gave me joy in burning that money.”
Defence QC, Mukhtar Hussain, claims that the rape and sex assault allegations were false and the couple were blackmailing Nicholson.
(Proceeding)
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/