82-year-old denies a string of charges in Irvine

GLASGOW (SCOTLAND)
The Evening Times

March 6, 2018

A FORMER altar boy told a jury that a priest sexually abused him twice on a beach.

The 49-year-old was giving evidence at the trial of 82-year-old Father Francis Moore who denies sexually abusing three boys and a student priest.

The offences are alleged to have been committed between 1977 and 1996.

Yesterday at the High Court, the witness said that the abuse took place when he was 11 and Moore was his parish priest.

The witness said that Moore and a group of altar boys would go to Irvine beach and that he had been there twice alone with the priest.

He said: “After we finished with the swimming he would take an interest in drying me.”

The witness was asked if he was wearing his swimming trunks and replied: “Not when he was interested in drying me.”

The man told the jury that the priest went behind him and sexually abused him.

The witness said that he told no-one what happened until he was 17 or 18 and told a school friend.

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