'And in that moment all of the memories of him molesting me came flooding back' - Trial hears from man who alleges Robert Gould abused him while babysitting

Robert Gould, who denies assaulting 14 young boys in Rushden in the 1970s and 80s, is standing trial at Northampton Crown Court.

He is charge with 31 offences to which he has pleaded not guilty.

The court has now heard from 11 of his alleged victims.

Yesterday (Monday, January 13) the court was shown video of a police interview with a man, Witness K, who says he was molested while Gould was babysitting him when he was aged nine or ten.

At the time, Gould had moved jobs from South End Juniors to work at Newton Road Primary School in the town. He and his wife were friendly with Witness K’s mother and they babysat sometimes in an evening.

Witness K said that he had a very tricky time with a domineering father while growing up. He said that he had learned to do what adults told him and always tried to please them.

He said that he had only admitted to himself that the assaults had happened when his mother mentioned that Gould had been prosecuted for sexual abuse in the 1980s.

"She asked me, he didn’t abuse you, did he?” he said.

“And in that moment all of the memories of him molesting me came flooding back.”

He said that one night while Gould was babysitting he had asked to stay up later and Gould had said he had to ‘check him’ to see if he was all ready for bed.

He then stood with his back up against the door and sexually assaulted the boy.

"It came out of the blue,” he said.

"He’d clearly got me in his sights as a small vulnerable child that he wanted to do something to.

"He said ‘you can’t tell anyone that this happened and if you don’t tell anyone then you can stay up later.”

On a second occasion the sexual assault was worse and the boy was coerced into touching Gould.

"You don’t have a voice,” he said.

"You’re just told what to do because you’re trying to please the people around you.”

He said that the memory was ‘embedded’ in his mind.

"What he looked like, how he smelt.. I don’t remember much from the 1970s but I shut my eyes and it comes straight back.

"Sometimes he was saying ‘this is our secret’ and ‘we must never tell anyone, people would be cross if they knew wasn’t ready for bed’.

"There was manipulation as to who would be in trouble, meaning I would be in trouble, not him.”

Witness K said that he thought that Gould’s wife might have been in another room of the house when he was sexually assaulted as he remembered someone sitting in the room with them afterwards.

The 74-year-old of Wellingborough Road, Rushden, has watched impassively as the court has heard the witness testimony over the past four days.

Yesterday the court also heard live testimony from Witness E, whose video evidence they heard last week. Witness E told the court that he had not had any contact with the other victims since school.

Under cross examination he was asked if he had sent a Facebook message to any of the other defendants after he had gone to the police but said he did not remember doing so.

A statement from his partner said that he had told her what had happened some years before.

"It took a long time for me to reassure him it wasn’t his fault,” she said.

"It wasn’t until his late 30s that he realised it wasn’t something he’d done.”

A statement from the long-term partner of another alleged victim, Witness I, was also read to the court. She said that he had first told her about what happened to him when they were watching television, about 31 years ago.

The statement said that Witness I had been on a school trip with Gould and had fallen into some water. Gould had later taken him back to his room and rubbed cream into the top of his leg, right up to his groin.

He saw Gould at a christening at sometime later at Park Road Methodist Church where he was working as a lay preacher.

He had told his partner: “They let him in even though he’s been in prison for sexual abuse.”

Witness I had then confronted Gould, asking him if he remembered him but Gould did not reply.

Another man was also in court to give evidence yesterday.

Witness J told the court how, when he was nine or ten years old, he had been at the youth club at Park Road Methodist Church which was then run by Gould and his wife.

He had been wearing jeans which were laced instead of zipped, and they kept slipping down. He told the court he remembered Gould taking him on his own, down a corridor, into a kitchen where he pulled both his trousers and underpants right down to the boy’s ankles and knelt down to face his genitals. He then pulled them back up and tied the lace back up and sent him out.

Under cross examination, barrister Hannah Edwards showed Witness J a picture of the hall, which showed the kitchen opening up through a hatch into the main hall. She said that if he had been in the kitchen then the incident would have been seen by all the other people there.

He said he couldn’t recall whether the layout had been different at that time.

The trial continues.

NOTE: It emerged later in the trial that Gould did not work at Newton Road alongside his wife.