A RETIRED NFU officer has denied sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy at his Devon farm more than 40 years ago.
Philip Huxtable is a lay preacher, former Captain of the Braunton Boys Brigade, governor of two primary schools in North Devon and clerk to three parish councils.
He is on trial at Exeter Crown Court accused of abusing a boy who he met while running a youth club and whom he employed with a Saturday job for three months on his farm at Shirwell in 1973.
The boy, now in his 50s, told the jury Huxtable repeatedly touched him in a cow shed and in his van during his visits to the Higher Upcott Farm.
He says he was also sexually assaulted by Huxtable at the NFU offices in Cross Street, Barnstaple, six years later when he went to apply for car insurance.
Huxtable, aged 78, of Westaway Close, Braunton, denies four counts of indecently assaulting the boy in the mid 1970s when he was aged 13 to 15.
He told the jury at the time he was working for the NFU but also had a smallholding at Shirwell with 12 Dexter cattle, 24 calves, 52 Dorset Devon sheep and chickens,
He ran a youth club at a nearby village where he met the boy, who came to work for him on Saturdays in the summer and autumn of 1973.
He said the boy was unruly at the youth club and when he was employed often spoke about his sexual exploits with another youth from his village.
Huxtable said the only physical contact between them had been when he brushed his hand across the boy’s bottom while ushering him away after the teenager had tried to touch him inappropriately.
He said: "The allegation that I touched him in my van is almost physically impossible. It had very heavy steering and I had to keep both hands on the wheel.
“I did not perform any sexual acts with him at the farm. Nothing sexual happened at all. He spent a lot of time talking about what he got up to with his friend but I did not want to know.
“I was not interested in that sort of behaviour with him. I was not interested in sexual contact.
“There was only one occasion when there was anything that might be called groping. I was bent over feeding the calves and he started pinching and poking my back so I turned around and stroked him over his bottom.”
Huxtable also denied any sexual activity took place at the NFU office when the boy, then aged 19 or 20, came to get car insurance.
He said: "I was joint secretary and joint insurance agent. On that day I was sorting out policy documents and they were all over the floor of my office so he had to stand in the open doorway.
“There was not contact between us. The door was propped open and there was a secretary working in the front office at the end of the corridor.”
The jury were read two testimonials detailing Huxtable’s work in the community as an elder of the Christ Church Methodist and United Reform Church in Braunton and the associated Boys Brigade, where he was Captain for 18 years.
He was also chair of governors at Shirwell Primary School for eight years and a governor at North Molton school for 20 years. He has also been clerk to the Pilton, Shirwell and Fremington parish councils and chairman of the Dexter Cattle Group.
Mervyn Kerswell, who was a fellow officer in the Boys Brigade, said Huxtable was meticulous in enforcing the safeguarding rules and making sure no adult, including himself, was ever left alone with a child.