A COUNCILLOR befriended a 13-year-old boy so he could sexually abuse him on the foreign trips he made as a holiday coach driver, a court heard today. (Monday, April 7)

Serving Stanley Town Councillor Peter McLaughlin, 61, was said to have targeted the boy, knowing he was “vulnerable” and in need of an understanding friend.

He used that friendship to persuade him that the sexual activity in which they engaged in hotels all over Europe and in the UK was “normal”, a jury at Carlisle Crown Court was told.

Coun McLaughlin, former council chairman and ex-chairman of Stanley Area Action Partnership, is said to have committed the offences while driving for Redcrest, a Carlisle-based holiday company, in the early 1990s.

He faces charges only in relation to incidents alleged to have happened in the UK, in hotels and at Coun McLaughlin's then home in Greystone Road, Carlisle, because anything that happened abroad would have been outside the jurisdiction of British courts.

Coun McLaughlin, of Murray Park, Stanley, County Durham has pleaded not guilty to 15 charges of indecent assault, saying he had never been on any coach trips with the boy and had never had him to stay at his Carlisle home.

Opening the case to the jury of eight women and four men, prosecuting barrister Kim Whittlestone said it was “a classic case where a young child has been groomed by an adult into believing that what was occurring to them was normal.”

She said Coun McLaughlin, had started grooming the boy “from very, very early in their relationship”, so that by the time invited him to join him on his foreign trips he thought there was nothing wrong in his behaviour.

She said: “Then he started putting into action what he had intended all along.” 

She said it did not matter if the boy had agreed to what Coun McLaughlin did to him because it is illegal to have even consensual sexual activity with anyone under 16.

Ms Whittlestone said the boy kept it a secret for many years, though years later he eventually told his wife and mother.

He reported it to the police after receiving counselling following talks with his GP.

In evidence given from behind a screen the alleged victim, now a man in his 30s, said he looked upon Coun McLaughlin as “cool, funny and friendly”, so went along happily with anything he suggested.

He said the first time Coun McLaughlin abused him was after he went along to help out with such chores as loading the luggage into the coach, calling out the bingo numbers to the holidaymakers and generally clearing up after them.

He said: “It was all fun, it was exciting. To be travelling away on one of those buses was a big adventure at that age.”

He said that in a hotel in Switzerland they shared a double bed, naked, in a hotel, and it was there that Coun McLaughlin first molested him after watching soft porn films on television.

He said he had no “concerns” about what Coun McLaughlin was doing to him, except that it was “a funny sensation” when his moustache tickled him when he was kissing him.

“It was a new experience, one that felt very good and so I didn't question it. At that age I was not sexually experiences and I didn't know what was happening, to be honest.

“It was pleasurable. Enjoyable. I was not made in any way to feel scared by what had happened. It was not an aggressive episode or anything like that. It was exciting. It was, it was exciting.”

The jury heard that when interviewed by the police after his arrest Coun McLaughlin denied everything, saying that a few years ago his alleged victim had phoned him, asking him to lend him £20,000.

Coun McLaughlin said he refused, and put the phone down.

The trial is expected to last all week.