Jury retires for second day in trial of ex-police chief accused of abusing boys

A jury has retired for a second day to consider its verdicts in the trial of a former senior police officer accused of historical sex abuse against two boys.

Ex-superintendent Gordon Anglesea, 79, is alleged to have used his "connections with authority" to prey on the youngsters while working as a police inspector in Wrexham in the 1980s.

And it is claimed he was also spotted at the home of a convicted paedophile and became a regular visitor to the Bryn Alyn Children's Home in North Wales run by John Allen, currently jailed for life for sexually abusing youngsters there, Mold Crown Court has heard.

Anglesea won £375,000 in libel damages in 1994 from four media organisations who claimed he was linked to sexual abuse in children's homes.

He denies three counts of indecent assault and one count of buggery between 1982 and 1987, against two boys, both aged 14 or 15 at the time.

The jury of six men and five women first went out at 9.51am yesterday and came back into court at 3.50pm to be sent home for the night.

They were brought back into court at 9.40am today and have now retired to the jury room to resume their deliberations.

During the six-week trial the jury has heard Anglesea, of Colwyn Bay, North Wales, ran a Home Office attendance centre in Wrexham, where tearaway teenage boys involved in petty crime would be given a "short, sharp, shock" through a military-style regime of marching, drill parade sessions and physical exercise.

Anglesea would "inspect" the parade, make the youngsters do naked sit-ups and squat thrusts, then loiter around the showers "with a smirk on his face", it is claimed.

Three of the assaults allegedly took place at the attendance centre against one boy who was "last back to the showers" after a cross country run, the jury heard.

The other alleged victim said he was first sexually assaulted by John Allen while in care and living at the Bryn Alyn children's home and that the abuse sometimes involved other adults when he was "handed around like a handbag".

The complainant told the court that on an occasion at a house in Mold the defendant "grabbed him by the hair" and forced him to perform oral sex on him, calling him "scum" and telling the boy he had the "power to send him away".

The defendant started his career with the police in Cheshire and transferred to Wrexham in 1976, was promoted to the rank of inspector and ran the attendance centre between 1979 and 1987, before retiring as a superintendent in 1991.

Anglesea told the jury the allegations against him were "totally and utterly untrue" and he was the victim of a malicious "conspiracy of lies" motivated by money, through compensation claims for criminal injuries.

He told the court he had cause to attend at the Bryn Alyn and Bryn Estyn Children's Homes, which were in his Wrexham police patch, to administer police cautions to boys.

The jury heard the alleged victims and witnesses had led "troubled" lives of crime, drugs and alcoholism due to the childhood abuse they had suffered.