A man who has accused the widow of a Court of Appeal judge of sexually abusing him when he was a child today told a court he ‘realised the shame I carried wasn’t mine to bear’.
Lady Lavinia Nourse, from Newmarket, Suffolk, is on trial at Peterborough’s Nightingale court, in the Knight’s Chamber at the city’s cathedral, charged with historical sexual abuse.
Lady Lavinia denies 17 counts of sexually abusing a boy under the age of 12.
The charges, which all relate to the same male complainant, are five counts of indecently assaulting a boy and 12 counts of indecency with a child.
The alleged incidents took place between 1981 and 1990.
Lady Lavinia, 77, was married to Sir Martin Nourse, who died in 2017 aged 85.
Giving evidence today, the complainant said he ‘carried the shame throughout my childhood’ and has had therapy following nine years of alleged abuse in the 1980s.
‘I realised the shame I carried for this wasn’t mine to bear,’ he said. ‘It belonged to that woman sitting over there [the defendant], who abused me throughout my childhood. It’s her shame.’
The man, who cannot be identified, added that when he confronted Lady Lavinia years later, in 2018, she tried to lay the blame on him for instigating it.
Lady Lavinia Nourse (pictured outside court yesterday) is on trial at Peterborough’s Nightingale court charged with historical sexual abuse
Lady Lavinia, from Newmarket, Suffolk, was married to Sir Martin Nourse (pictured), who died in 2017 aged 85
The man, who is now in his 40s, said: ‘The last thing I ever wanted to do was to go to the police in respect of these allegations.
‘I wanted her to take responsibility for her actions, I wanted her to beg for my forgiveness.
‘She did none of those things – the first thing she said was it was my fault for getting into her bed with an erection.
‘She has subsequently adopted the position that she doesn’t remember anything. So I went to the police.
‘I cannot accept that she has no memory of sexually abusing me between the ages of about three or four, up to the age of 11 or 12.’
The complainant has also said that he has been having to attend therapy in order to work through the lasting problems from Lady Lavinia’s alleged abuse.
He said: ‘I carried the shame of this sexual abuse throughout my childhood for the first 40 odd years of my life.
‘It is only now, through therapy, that I realised that the shame I carried was not mine to bear.
‘It belongs to that woman sitting over there, the woman who sexually abused me throughout my childhood. It is her shame.’
The court also heard from a woman well-known to the victim, who went with him for moral support in January 2018 to confront Lady Lavinia.
The woman said: ‘We went to see her so he could speak to her about what happened. She was shocked, I don’t think she was expecting it.
Lady Lavinia Nourse, pictured circa Spring 1997. Lady Lavinia and Sir Martin Nourse married in 1972
‘She didn’t deny that she had access to those memories of him being aroused in her bed.
‘But she said to him, ‘It was you who used to get in my bed with an erection – what was I to do?’
‘She seemed to be blaming him for what happened – that’s how I interpreted it.
‘To me, it seemed like she was remembering stuff that had happened, but she was clear in her mind that it was his responsibility, not hers.’
Jennifer Knight QC, prosecuting, earlier told the trial the boy ‘tried to bury away the memories’ of alleged abuse but that, years later, after he got married and had children, he ‘became increasingly troubled by his recollection’.
In a recording played to the court on Wednesday, the complainant said Lady Lavinia ‘screwed me up’.
He said that, years after the alleged abuse, he experienced difficulties in his relationship with his wife, which led him to tell her.
‘It’s fair to say the root of my problems is I was sexually abused,’ he said.
The man said in the recording that he was ‘trying to work things through but it got to such a point that I had to admit to what happened to me when I was younger’.
Lavinia Nourse yesterday arrived at Knights Chamber where she is charged with 17 counts of sexually abusing a boy under the age of 12
The court heard that Lady Lavinia previously had a PR company which had organised the premieres of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express and Phantom Of The Opera, and organised the Queen’s 60th birthday celebrations.
Ms Knight earlier told the trial that the complainant told his wife what had happened to him and later reported his allegations to police.
Lady Lavinia was first interviewed by officers in 2019.
The defendant claims that the alleged incidents of abuse did not happen.
Lady Lavinia and Sir Martin Nourse married in 1972 and had two children together.
The couple moved to the Grade-II listed Dullingham House in Newmarket, Suffolk, in 1994. The 18th century manor was listed for sale in June 2018 for £2.75million.
The pair were described by The Telegraph as ‘gregarious’ and often threw soirées at their country estate with friends.
The defendant claims that the alleged incidents of abuse did not happen, Jennifer Knight QC, prosecuting, said
Sir Martin was born in Cambridge in 1932. His father was a GP and his maternal grandfather was Sir Charles Henry Sargant, a High Court judge in Chancery and a Lord Justice of Appeal.
Inspired by his mother’s father, he went on to attend Winchester College before going on to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge after two years’ national service.
In a distinguished career spanning decades, he specialised in the Commercial Court and Chancery Division at the Court of Appeal, and retired in 2006 but continued to sit in the court part-time.
One of his most notable cases took place in 1979, when he gave the Inland Revenue permission to sue the estate of the late Selfridges billionaire Sir Charles Clore.
The trial, which is set to last two weeks, continues.