An ex-junior football coach has gone on trial accused of the repeated sexual abuse of a young player.
Anthony John Pickering, now 61, faces four charges which arise out of incidents which are said to have occurred during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
It is alleged that Pickering molested a primary school age youngster in a variety of ways.
Pickering, formerly of Claife Avenue, Windermere, denies two charges alleging attempted serious sexual acts, two charges of indecent assault, and is on trial at Carlisle Crown Court.
Opening the case this afternoon, prosecutor Tim Evans gave graphic details of the alleged sexual abuse and said Pickering had abused the trust placed in him both by the boy and his parents.
“The abuse of trust came from the fact that he was a football coach when he was doing these things, trusted by parents and others to behave appropriately in that role,” alleged Mr Evans.
The court heard an incident in 2020 had been the trigger for the complainant to collapse on to the living room floor, sobbing his heart out in front of relatives.
He was said to have told them: “Blame Tony Pickering for this because he has been in my head.”
The man reportedly said he had been sexually abused as a child and that Pickering had urged him not to tell his parents. The man later told police: “It happened on numerous occasions.” He also said: “I’ve kept this a secret until now.”
And he told an officer: “You never really realised what he was doing at the time, and then he’d just kind of progress from there. Every time you went there, it’d kind of happen again and again.”
Jurors heard Pickering had previously been convicted, after trial, of sexually abusing other junior players at the club. He continued to deny his guilt in relation to these criminal proceedings.
Mr Evans told the jury: “You must not assume that because this defendant has these previous convictions…that (the current complainant) must be telling the truth about these matters. Please don’t automatically assume that just because somebody has done something before that they have done it again.”
“The simple issue for you,” Mr Evans told jurors in relation to the new allegations, “is did these events actually happen.”
When questioned by police about the current allegations, Pickering denied any wrongdoing. He said he did not know the individual who had made the allegations, and suggested he had “jumped on the bandwagon of other complaints”.
Pickering denied being one of the main football coaches, saying he was simply an assistant helping out there and that he was a young man himself at the time.
The trial, which is expected to last several days, continues.
