A teacher accused of raping and sexually abusing a 15-year-old pupil more than two decades ago has denied the allegations.
Malcolm Nicholson told a jury today that he had never had any sexual contact with the alleged victim and said she had been blackmailing him for money.
He said he had been “foolish” to hand over any money to her but he felt threatened.
Nicholson, 46, was a science teacher at St Edmund Arrowsmith School in Prescot, Merseyside, at the time of the alleged offences.
Nicholson, who now lives in Morton Carr Lane, Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough, told a jury that her claims that he had taken her to his home in Allerton and also to his parents’ home in Middlesbrough while they were away were untrue.
His accuser, who is now in her 30s, has told how memories of the alleged sexual abuse flooded back after watching news reports on the crimes of paedophile Jimmy Savile and she realised ‘that what Malcolm had done to me was wrong” . She later confided in her husband.
She contacted Nicholson on social media and he allegedly begged her not to go to the police and offered her £200,000.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that he made an initial payment of £8,000 to buy her silence but the woman and her husband burnt the cash in their back garden. She said it was ‘blood money’.
She went to the police in February 2014 to make a formal complaint.
Nicholson, who denies two charges involving rape and indecent assault, told the jury today that with hindsight he realised he had been “too matey” with the children he taught at the school and had sometimes given some of them lifts home, possibly including the alleged victim.
He said that he left the school in 1995 and went on to teach at international schools in the Bahamas and Thailand, where he became a vice-principal in 2003. He met his wife while there and they went on to have two children.
He was living and working at The Hague in the Netherlands when the woman first contacted him on Twitter and later by text message.
Nicholson said that she wanted him to pay for what he had done and said that she would go to the police unless he came up with an alternative solution. She asked for £200,000 within a week, he claimed.
He explained that if her claims came out he would lose his job with the prestigious IBO educational organisation whose ethos is to make the world a better place through education.
The defendant said that the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, “kept pushing and pushing” and she and a man kept ringing him.
The Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, Liverpool Crown Court.
He said that he could not afford £200,000 and after she asked for “a small token” he agreed to send her his £8000 savings as “the first package” and this went into her bank account in January 2014.
Asked by his QC Mukhtar Hussain why he had done so he said, “It was obviously a foolish thing to do but I was being threatened to pay £200,000 or she would go to the police.
“That night my wife and I could not sleep, it was absolutely horrendous. It was not a situation anyone is prepared for.”
After asking his parents for advice he went to a solicitor and on his advice he told the woman not to contact him again. He told the court that he and his wife had been scared and found it terrifying that “these blackmailers bombarded” his home and office in Cardiff with phone calls.
He explained that he told IBO about the situation as he was worried about their reputation and his worst fears were realised as he was dismissed on March 1, 2014.
He consequently had to sell their home and has had to move back in with his parents. He is still jobless, he said.
“Is there any truth in the allegations from beginning to end?” asked Mr Hussain. “No”, he replied.
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Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/