A FUNERAL director accused of abusing five boys over a period of more than 20 years frequented known gay haunts of public toilets and lay-bys, a jury was told.

Gerald Martin is on trial at Teesside Crown Court where it was alleged today that he carried out a series of serious sexual assaults between 1974 and 1996.

The 66-year-old was said by prosecutor Peter Makepeace, QC, to have preyed on vulnerable teenagers at three different public loos and at his place of work.

Mr Martin – married, but said to be well-known in the Hartlepool gay community – was initially charged in 2013 with abusing a boy when he was aged about 14.

But after newspaper publicity surrounding the case, others came forward or were traced by police acting on tip-offs from others, Mr Makepeace told the jury.

The jury of seven men and five women was selected from people who had no links to various Boys Brigade troops in the town or St James’s Church in Rossmere.

Potential panel members were also asked if they had connections with the former Co-op store in Park Road, where Mr Martin worked had worked after leaving school.

The court heard how he met his wife of 37 years through her work with the church and his voluntary service with the Boys Brigade, where he had become Captain.

The former department store worker also attended a monastery for a short time as he contemplated becoming a monk or a career in religion, Mr Makepeace said.

Mr Martin, of Valley Drive, Hartlepool, denies a total of 13 sex charges said to have been committed against five boys whose ages range from 11 to 15.

He denies false imprisonment which is said to have happened when he dragged a child from a public loo near Church Square to his car and drove him to his funeral parlour to abuse him.

During a series of police interviews, he changed his account a number of times, but ultimately claimed all his gay sex activity was with consenting adults.

Mr Makepeace said: “By the early 1970s, Mr Martin had taken to frequenting toilets in Hartlepool and also lay-bys in the area in search of homosexual liaisons.

“He told the police he first realised he was homosexual when he was at the Co-op . . . he accepted at the end of his second interview he would regularly go to lay-bys and toilets for sex with men.”

The court heard how one of the alleged victims assaulted Mr Martin years later, when he was an adult, after he was winked at at his grandmother’s funeral.

The trial continues.