A MAN who alleged he was sexually abused by a Catholic priest almost 40 years ago denied inventing the claims simply to get compensation.

“No compensation was on my mind - justice was on my mind,” he told a jury yesterday.

He claimed that while a pupil at St Joseph’s College, a seminary for prospective priests, in Upholland, Lancashire, Father Michael Higginbottom carried out repeated serious sexual assaults on him.

The 74-year-old, currently suspended from St Augustine’s Church, Darlington, is on trial at Liverpool Crown Court.

He denies eight offences - four of serious serious sexual assault and four of indecent assault - alleged to have taken place in the late 1970s.

David Temkin, prosecuting. said the man, in his early teens at the time, said Fr Higginbottom, a physics and form teacher, summoned him to his quarters just a week after his arrival.

He said that Fr Higginbottom locked the door and carried out the serious sexual assault, which he repeated two days later and then on many other occasions. He also forced the boy to perform a sex acts on him many times.

In cross examination, Adam Birkby, defending, suggested the complainant had made up the evidence to gain compensation.

The man, now 52, denied this but agreed he had contacted solicitors in 2014 after reading an article linking Fr Higginbottom to a civil case involving another former pupil who was awarded £35,000 in an out-of-court settlement involving alleged abuse.

But he insisted he was not interested in compensation and did not speak to the lawyer he dealt with about money.

He was shown a ‘no win no fee’ agreement later from the solicitors which, he agreed he signed.

Asked by Judge Andrew Menary, QC, if he anticipated the solicitor making a claim in future on his behalf, he replied “I may have, but I didn’t want the money.”

The court has heard that he told no one of his alleged ordeal until October 2013 when he confided in a friend.

He explained shortly before he had been at a Christian Fellowship meeting when a man he knew said “out of the blue” the Holy Spirit had told him he had been violated.

He then told his friend who advised him to alert police which he did and he then contacted the solicitors the following year.

He said: “I wanted that man to feel as scared as I did at Upholland.”

The alleged victim wept as Mr Temkin took him through his police statement in which he told how he suffered from anger problems.

His therapists believed it was due to a serious road traffic accident he was involved in and that, at one stage, his wife had left him.

The court previously heard how left the seminary after deliberately stealing a watch so he could be expelled.

“I felt angry that no-one ever wanted to know why I was different when I returned from Upholland,” he sobbed.

The trial continues