Man on trial accused of abducting and raping 11 year old girl near Blairgowrie
Last updated 5th Aug 2019
A man has gone on trial accused of sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl and repeatedly raping a woman.
His younger alleged victim – now a 50-year-old grandmother – told the High Court in Livingston that Townsley sexually abused her three times after inviting her to go for walks with him on a remote Perthshire fruit farm.
She said the first three walks passed uneventfully, but on the fourth he pushed her to the ground, took her trousers off and raped her.
She told the jury: “At the time I didn’t know what it was, but I got older and realised he raped me. He forced himself on me.
“I was terrified. I was crying. I just wanted back home. I don’t know how long it lasted for. It seemed like forever.”
Speaking from behind a screen with a supporter she described in a hushed voice three separate instances of sexual abuse at Townsley’s hands starting with the rape.
Asked if she’d told anyone at the time she said: “Yes. I told my mother what happened, I told her what George done to me. At that time I never had the sense of what it was.
“My mum took me by the hand and took me over to where he was, in a van or a caravan. My mother opened the door and told him if he ever done that again to me he’d get arrested. He never said nothing.
“We’re from a travelling community and we don’t talk about stuff like this, but five or six years ago I took a mini breakdown about what happened to me when I was a child.”
She said she eventually made a complaint to the police three years ago.
Townsley, 64, a prisoner at Dumfries, is charged with indecently assaulting, abducting and raping the woman 40 years ago when she was 11-years-old.
He is also charged with assaulting a married woman on two occasions by compressing her throat and restricting her breathing and repeatedly raping her between January 1982 and 1985.
The prosecution alleges that the sexual offences were committed at a farm near in Blairgowrie, Perthshire, and the assaults either in the same area or in Dundee.
Townsley denies all the charges and the trial, before Lord Uist, continues.