A WITNESS in a sex abuse case told the court she "didn't want to live anymore" after being raped at the age of 14.
The first witness in the case against Stuart Wilson, 52, of Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby, spoke at Grimsby Crown Court yesterday.
He is accused of one count of rape, one count of attempted rape, 16 counts of indecent assault and one of supplying heroin, all of which happened between September 1987 and September 2003. The trial began on Monday and he denies the charges.
Jurors saw a testimony on DVD, in which she claimed he raped her when she was a teenager.
She said she began harming herself afterwards, and a few days following the incident, she purposely cut her arm with the edge of a broken mug she had dropped.
"I just didn't want to live anymore – I was tired of everything and didn't think it was going to stop," she claimed.
Jurors were told that later on, the witness suffered what she believed to be a miscarriage while lying on the floor alone in a bathroom.
She claimed she was too embarrassed and afraid to talk to anyone, so buried the remains in a garden.
Her family noticed "a change in behaviour", she said, and she started suffering from night terrors.
The court also heard how the witness became addicted to heroin in her teenage years, because it "shut everything out".
In the midst of her addiction, she came back into contact with Mr Wilson and claims he offered her money for sex, which she initially refused.
She claimed Mr Wilson offered more and more money, and she eventually agreed to sex for £130 – but told him she "couldn't do it" without drugs.
She told the court that he obtained heroin for her and they had sex, and that this happened numerous times for varying amounts of money but she was always "out of it".
The witness said she eventually became a sex worker because she "couldn't keep doing it".
Jonathan Sharp, acting for the complainant, asked her a number of questions.
He told her that he wanted to clarify the age she was when this was happening and her sexual experience at various ages.
The witness told him that she was aged 13 or 14 when she was raped and that the abuse stopped afterwards.
However, leading up to that point, she said Wilson touched her most days and was forced to touch him on a weekly basis.
Mr Sharp asked if she had any sexual contact with another man before she miscarried, and she told the court that she had not.
Craig Lowe, acting for the defence, then cross-examined the witness.
He highlighted that she has a string of shoplifting offences, which she had previously alluded to when talking about her heroin addiction.
Mr Lowe also highlighted a number of suicide attempts in her past and a section in the year 2000 – which she had also mentioned previously – saying she had a "history of psychotic illness".
He also mentioned that the witness had made an allegation of sexual abuse against another man in the past, which never went to court – yet she had not reported Mr Wilson.
Mr Lowe said: "If you're already reporting one man, it would be the easiest thing in the world to say that another is doing something wrong.
"It just doesn't make much sense – your explanation doesn't hold much water."
The witness said: "I was worried that I wouldn't be believed if I said that two people had done it."
Mr Lowe also pointed out that some of the dates the witness mentioned were inconsistent with information he had obtained.
He said: "You claim you were nine years old when the abuse started when actually you were knocking on for 11."
The witness conceded she may have been wrong about her exact age but insisted that the abuse did happen.
Mr Wilson is the father of Claire Wilson, who was murdered in 2009 while she was six months pregnant, as she walked to Pizza Hut, in Grimsby.
The case continues.
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