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Gay foster carer sexually abused me, boy tells trial

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Geoff Fox

Yorkshire Evening Post

A youngster has told a court how one of his gay foster carers made lurid threats before sexually abusing him.

The 15-year-old claims Craig Faunch, 32, forced himself upon the vulnerable teenager on a number of occasions and carried out several sex acts.

Faunch and his gay lover, Ian Wathey, 40, are on trial at Leeds Crown Court accused of abusing four boys aged between eight and 14 at their Sides Road home in Pontefract between February 2004 and January 2005.

The victim whose complaint triggered the police inquiry was giving evidence yesterday via video link and told the court how he had showered twice and used a full bottle of shower gel after one of the alleged incidents.

Cry Describing an incident in which he claimed Faunch came and sat next to him on the couch while he was watching television, the victim, who is now 15 and cannot be named, told the court: "He (Faunch) said 'I will give you something to remember me by.' I don't know what he meant at all." Describing the abuse, he added: "It hurt. Afterwards I said 'pack it in now' and then I went to bed.

"I was gutted. I didn't want anything to do with anyone else. I called him a dirty b******. All I could do was sit there and cry." But during cross-examination, Andrew Robertson QC for Faunch described the boy's troublesome background, highlighting his drug addiction problems and numerous other allegations of sexual abuse against women.

Mr Robertson said: "The truth is if you're in a place you don't like, you find the easiest way to get your own way is to make allegations up of a sexual nature. That's exactly what you did at Craig's house, isn't it?" To this the boy replied: "No." The teenager fled from the home on January 31 last year and told his brother's girlfriend what had happened.

A subsequent police investigation led to three other boys claiming they had also been sexually abused. The youngest were eight-year-old twins who Faunch is alleged to have filmed naked in the shower and also photographed urinating at the toilet.

One of the twins found the photographs and gave one to his mother, with whom he maintained regular contact while he was in care.

Giving evidence, the twins' mother told the court that she had immediately phoned Faunch and said "What do you think you are doing taking pictures (of my son) with a camera?" She said: "I didn't scream but I was forceful." The woman refused to allow her sons to return to the couple's home and notified Wakefield Council, who had approved Wathey and Faunch as foster careers in July 2003.

But social services chiefs at the council accepted the couple's explanation that the photographs had been taken to embarrass the children into closing the toilet door and the police were not involved.

It subsequently emerged that social services had lost the photo which the boys' mother had handed over as part of the inquiry.

Faunch denies two counts of taking an indecent photograph of a child and five counts of sexual activity with a child. Wathey, who is said to have shown one of his victims a hardcore gay porn film, denies six counts of sexual activity with a child and one of causing a child to watch a sexual activity.

2006 May 12