UNITED KINGDOM
West Briton
By cg_graham | Posted: September 01, 2016
Jeremy Dowling, the former Diocese of Truro spokesman, has told a Truro Crown Court jury he did not sexually abuse a boy while working as a lay preacher in North Cornwall 40 years ago. Dowling said he was currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for sexually abusing five boys in the 1960s, offences committed while he was a schoolteacher, which he admitted and was dealt with by the court last year.
But he categorically denied further charges concerning a man, now in his fifties, who claims Dowling also abused him, including on one occasion at a church.
Dowling was a lay preacher at St Michael’s church, Budehaven, and later at St Gennys church, Crackington Haven. The complainant told police he thought he had been sexually abused at St Eval church, but could not recall specific details of the location and attempts to establish independent corroboration from former clerics and church officials had been unsuccessful.
Dowling denies six charges of indecently assaulting a boy under 14, and two of gross indecency, all between 1973 and 1977. He said it was not true that he had “taken the boy under his wing” and taken him to visit churches in Cornwall, or to the Plymouth television studios where Dowling later presented a late-night religious programme.
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