MY REASON FOR LEAVING

Ihave been asked by a number of people why I am making my exit.

heres why, and the names have been changed

My partner and I met in Mid 1999 and lived on a small cul de sac in a small northern UK from June 99 to November 2011.
This accusation came to light in June 2013.
We became friends with a family where we used to live. Mum (Angela) Father (Peter) Son (Robert 9 yrs old) along with an older brother (Michael) and younger one (Elliot) in 2006

Damien (my partner) and I have always preferred to keep our own counsel, and whilst we were on waving terms with almost all our neighbours, we did not as a rule socialise with them, as we enjoyed our privacy. We were leaving for work one morning, (mid2005) and Angela stopped us in the close as she had a burst pipe in her home and didn’t know how to switch off the water. Damien dropped me off at work and went back to help out as best he could.
Angela thanked us and came round with a bottle of wine as a thankyou.
My friendship with his mother was initially good, as it was quite apparent that she and her husband were having a tough time with their business, and their marriage it would appear was also disintegrating as well. I created a website for their business at no charge. Over the initial period of our friendship we spent a lot of time with the family, and before long we were in and out of each other’s home on a fairly regular basis. Initially Peter, Angela and the boys would visit, however Angela was to tell us that Peter wasn’t comfortable with “the whole gay thing” so his visits were fairly infrequent.

Roberts’ older brother Michael would also visit our home from time to time, and after a while it was becoming something of a regular thing.
Robert was a very moody child, who was rude and aggressive to his mother, and was bullied by his father, who would call him him a ******. It was quite apparent that Angela had very low self esteem due to her obesity and her son Robert often used this as a stick to beat her with as did Peter. Angela confided in me that he was also very cruel to her. I always felt very uncomfortable around Peter, especially after Angela had confided in me, how she was treated by him.

Angela was convinced she had a “gift” for mediumship and although I have a very open mind, I didn’t feel it was my place to detract from her thoughts, but was happy to watch various programmes and take them at face value. What began as a weekly visit to watch a 1 hour programme, call Most Haunted, Angela and I began spending more and more time together, and her behaviour became stranger and stranger
Robert was always very precocious and often rude to me, and Damien always claimed that Robert made him feel uncomfortable, our contact with him was very minimal.

My friendship with Robert’s mum seemed to develop very quickly once again. She began to buy me things, a leather jacket , underwear , bottles of wine, and it became something of a joke between Damien and I.
By choice, I’ve never had someone I could call a best mate and she always appeared desperate to be told that she was that to me. I said it but didn’t appreciate that this would for her give her carte Blanche to rule my life.
It got to the point where when we came home, we would have to park our car away from the house, for fear that she would come round. We would agree to do stuff together and then she would plan 4 more things for us to do. She would come round when we were in the middle of having a meal, and would end up staying for 4 hours, berating her husband, discussing issues surrounding Roberts deteriorating behaviour. She was very overbearing.
Angela seemed obsessed with sex and sexuality. She would speak very inappropriately, regarding neighbours, her step father and the best friend of her oldest son Michael. She was constantly talking about her husband’s infidelity with a staff member.

Over the next few months, we got to know each other and had a few parties at their house. Robert must have been 8 or 9 years old and his mum would encourage him to get dressed in girls makeup and the like.
She was convinced that I or Damien or both of us, must fancy any man that was going. We had a laugh about it and I took part in some idol ribbing from time to time, however everything about us, as far as she was concerned, was about sexuality.

Peter and Angela ran a car parts business, and Peter undertook a repair to our car. He caused an electrical fault by cutting the main earth on the engine, and whilst the fault was sorted, they lent us one of their cars. He refused to take responsibility for his damage however, and initially said it was a faulty part. We both felt very let down, when the car was finally repaired, at our expense by an auto electrician.

Whenever Peter arrived home, I would leave the house, and one day when returning home, he shouted over to me and Damien, and made a “cut throat” sign. I texted Angela and she told me that she had told him I knew about his infidelity and therefore I was now the enemy. I told her that I was going to leave her and him to sort things out, and that I didn’t want to fall out about it, but felt very intimidated by Peter, and did not want to get involved in their marriage issues.
Robert spent a lot of time with our immediate neighbour Janie, who had 3 boys, and Angela would relay that he had seen sexually explicit photos of her on her computer, and that she was working as a prostitute. Damien and I took it with a pinch of salt. However one day Janie came to us, around xmas time 2007 and stated that Robert had told her 3 sons that Damien and I had ‘raped’ him. We spoke to Janies’ 3 boys, who confirmed what had been said. I spoke to Angela about this and she simply dismissed it as “its Robert being vile”. Damien was working in a local hospital, as an RGN, and I impressed on Angela the potential damage, such remarks could possibly do. She didn’t seem to appreciate the seriousness of the remarks, and in my view dismissed them out of hand.
For a while we saw less of each other, and then one day I received a text saying something to the effect that I should call over as Peter had finally gone.

Angela was separated from her husband by this time, and we tried to support her and her 2 children, through this difficult time, she was very short of money, the central heating in her home was on the verge of breaking down, and she was obviously under a lot of pressure. Her relationship with Robert had deteriorated to such an extent that I often found myself round at their house, playing mediator between him and Angela. I often got the impression that whilst Robert was often really frustrated and angry with his mother, but that she appeared to enjoy the whole drama of a late night slanging match, with her son and thrived off the excitement of it all.
Robert was completely out of control. He was basically left to run riot, and we found ourselves involved in countless arguments with other people too. We considered them friends and were always supportive of them.
Over time, her confidence grew a bit, she was now showing some confidence and attempting to lose weight and I’d encourage her at every opportunity. This diet meant that she couldn’t eat normal food and was to eat only shakes and the like as her body went in “ketosis”.
She’d been claiming great success over many weeks and I did all I could to encourage her. Then one evening I visited her house and found her tucking into fish and chips despite texting me that very say boasting of her 8lb weight loss.
Robert, her son told me that she’d actually been eating as normal and lying about her weightloss
I felt really let down that she had lied to me and made an attempt to draw back from my friendship with her
She just wouldn’t get the message though.
Robert would often threaten Angela that he was going to move in with his father and this hurt Angela a great deal. Robert’s time with his father was not a regular thing and Angela was always keen to see the back of him,and his younger brother Elliot so she could have her ‘fun’, as a newly single mum, and was, in her mind at least, managing her weight.
In August 2008 she had made contact with an old school friend on Facebook and was determined to take up on their romance 20 odd years ago. He was happily with someone and had been for a number of years.
Angela “accidentally” rang his girlfriend one night and caused massive ructions.
She actually told me she had done this on purpose, as she wanted to hurry things Along.
I was absolutely appalled and felt that she had been really bad for doing this.
I made it clear that due to her letting me down by lying previously about attempting to lose weight I was beginning to feel that she was only saying things she wanted me to hear.
Her behaviour became even worse and she was in my opinion totally out of control.
She was, as always very open about her sexual dalliances and for a period was seeing 3 men at the same time, a prison officer, her old school friend and a gentleman she “felt sorry for”. She later claims to have been raped by one of these men.

Me and my partner occasionally babysat Robert and his younger brother during this time, however this was in their home and neither child ever stayed over at our house, we’d occasionally take them out with our dogs around localparks and nearby woods.
Angela and I attended a local spiritualist church for a few weeks, and Angela at 1 point organised a clairvoyance evening in her home, which I went to
Angela’s behaviour was becoming more and more erratic, and such was my concern for their welfare that I contacted the boys older brother Michael and asked him to pass on to his father my concerns. The final straw came one night when she was running from door to door knocking people up at gone midnight because her father (deceased!) had turned all the pictures in her house upside down.
I was having none of it. I told her I felt it was more likely to be Robert than any afterlife intervention but she was absolutely adamant. This just affirmed to me that I had been right to contact her son regarding my concerns.

Contacting the boys brother/father was for her the ultimate betrayal
(End 2008)Angela then began ringing my work (a charity) claiming that I am untrustworthy, and just generally trying to denigrate me and my partner in any way she could. I, in turn lost my job at the charity, indirectly as a result of her. She had allowed me to store my motorbike in her garage, since her husband had left and after first denying me access to it, then went on to damage it, claiming it was undertaken by her ex husband. She seemed to be constantly ringing the police to accuse me of harassment, and it was during one of these visits from thje Police that we mentioned what Robert had previously said about us to our neighbours children, and they came back to tell us that she had agreed to give me my motorbike back and that they had spoken to Robert regarding his claims.

In a final salvo, Angela made an allegation that me and my partner had “groomed” the son of her friend Janette. I telephoned her and repeated what Angela had said. and she simply said, your argument with Angela, its your business and if that was the case, I would certainly be knocking on your door.
This mother was very concerned about the internet activities of her son, she was concerned about the people he meeting. She’d checked his internet history and gave us a few sites that she wanted us to check out.
And there was, we forwarded to her (after discussing that she really wanted to see it!) the explicit profile that Alan had posted on a gay mans dating website, which had been sent to me from someone who had stood him up on a date, when we took him to a Gay Pride festival.
Angela then presented me with a bill for all of the items she had purchased for me. I contacted the facebook and told him about her calling his girlfriend, and also reported her for an attempted insurance fraud. I was very angry and felt let down by Angela’s behaviour.
I changed my phone number and over the next couple of years my partner would get mysterious texts. He ask who it was and it was Angela who had “accidentally” texted us by mistake.

I received an email message (via Facebook) from Robert on 13.8.11 which read

“Hey James, haven’t seen you in ages. Angela is going away this weekend, you should come over, I will be in my own, there’s something I need to ask you”. I did not respond
Then the phone calls from Angela started, which we ignored for the most part. She called and left a message saying I need to talk to you, and despite us making it quite clear via text that we had no desire to reacquaint she said it was serious, she had totally changed, but she needed my help with a “police matter”.
We arranged for her to come round, and she dually arrived with her new husband, a quiet skinny guy, who was pleasant enough. She then proceeded to ask me if I would back her up if she made a report of rape to the police
She’d been attending counselling and been told by her counsellor that this was what she needed to do.
She was accusing the guy “she felt sorry for” claiming he took advantage.
At no point prior to this had she ever said anything regarding this sexual encounter and if she had in any way intimated that she felt this way, I would have backed her up 100%, but it appeared to me at the time it occurred to be just one of many sexual encounters she had embarked on
I made it clear to Angela that the total of my input could only ever be that I would concur that at the time she wasn’t in the best of situations, emotionally.
Me and my partner had just sold our house and had only a couple of months till we moved, and allowed ourselves to get caught up in a friendship once again.
She hadn’t changed, still overbearing, dramatic and inappropriate.
She suffered some issue with her cars and so Damien and I did a few favours for them and occasionally took the children to school, or collected them at the end of the day, As Angela felt unwell much of the time.
Her new husband was auditioning for xfactor and Robert came over and spent some time at our home whilst she was at the audition. He never actually stayed the night though as our only spare room was used as a storage area as the house was so small.
Well after midnight on night in September / October 2011, when Damien was working nights, Robert texted me something to the effect of “in my dressing gown at front door, ghost in garage, come over now”. Needless to say I never did, how the hell could I ever explain a 40 year old man in his pyjamas outside the house of a 15 year old boy looking for a ghost! It felt like I was being led on.
They were having issues with their internet for a while and she would occasionally come and use out internet. She one more than one occasion asked us if we would allow Robert to come over and use it for the evening, however we would say we were having an early night or were going out. neither of us have ever been comfortable having other peoples children in out home for this precise reason.

He did however came over to our home a couple of times, once with his friend Lucy immediately prior to our move to our new home
We moved home and we once again keen to make it clear that we no longer wanted to be friends. I mentioned that I were surprised that her rape allegation hadn’t been further addressed and she said that she was now counselling her new husband as he had also been raped. She said she had been very unimpressed with the “shit” presents we had sent to them for xmas, and an argument ensued. I told her that we were fed up with everything she had ever bought us was about sexuality She’d bring us an edible pink dildo back from blackpool, or give us furry pink rubber gloves and a pink drill as a gift.

And that was that: until July 13th 2013 when after almost 18 months having absolutely no contact with the family, the police turn up to arrest me on a charge of inciting a male under 13 to engage in a sexual act”

Robert happened to be Angela’s son, he was and never has been mine or Damiens friend. Certainly in the early days our contact with him was practically nil, and we would not have been comfortable spending time on our own with him, without his parents also being in attendance. The notion that he came over and spent the night at our house is simply not feasible.

I saw Robert one day in the month prior to my arrest. He was walking past our local Train Station and I waved over to him He held up his phone and signalled I should call him. I didnt

As I await trial the mother has made a further allegation regarding her youngst son, with another local man.

my barrister is very confident of a not guilty verdict, but I will always been tainted with the tag that these allegations always leave.