Retired police officer from Oswestry faces sex trial

Griffith Barker, 79, is charged with 23 offences relating to a boy and a girl who he is said to have abused in a "sustained and systematic" manner.

The offences are alleged to have happened when Barker, from Oswestry, was serving with Merseyside Police.

He is charged with 23 offences relating to a boy and a girl.

Barker, of Primrose Lane, Pant, has denied all the charges, which include gross indecency, indecent assault, indecency with a child and attempted rape.

The trial at Liverpool Crown Court heard a recording of one of Barker's alleged victims, who is now a middle-aged woman, as she gave an interview to the police.

She said: "It started with a lot of kissing. Not the right sort of kissing if you know what I mean. It seemed to be all the time. Every day with no breaks. I remember feeling suffocated. I just knew it wasn't right.

"He then started saying things like it's our secret, you won't see your mum again if you say anything. He was a police officer. I suppose I didn't realise at the time but as I got older he was so plausible. He was also really, really cruel. He had a nasty streak, very hurtful things, he used to say." The woman, who said she began being sexually abused when she was just three, added: "We had to look at magazines. Pornographic magazines, although I didn't know what they were at the time. I remember being sick and gagging."

Barker was charged after another victim, now a middle aged man, made a complaint to police over various forms of sexual abuse taking place when the defendant was a policeman living in Knotty Ash.

The man says the abuse happened when he was between the ages of six and 12, describing it as "snatched opportunities. A rub here, a fondle there."

Neville Biddle, prosecuting, said: "It is the prosecution case that during the 1960s and into the 1970s this defendant engaged in the sustained and systematic sexual abuse of these two children."

The trial continues.