Man ‘hurls boy off 100ft cliff’ as ‘darker image’ emerged throughout investigation

A man allegedly threw a boy off a 100ft cliff after the 10-year-old was attempting to stop him raping his sister, a court heard.

Anthony Stocks, 54, is currently on trial over the incident, which miraculously saw the boy survive the horror fall in Brighton. A witness told how the boy was heard “shrieking” as they saw a “small shape fall as if thrown from the cliff”.

However, during an investigation it was claimed that the man did so because the boy was attempting to stop him from raping his sister, 13 – something the man denies. He is currently facing charges of rape of a girl aged under 13 years and of attempted murder of the 10-year-old boy, The Mirror reports.

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Zoe Johnson, prosecuting, told the jury: “The defendant forced a girl under 13 to have sexual contact with him, knowing it was wrong. The boy had started to try to intervene. Unbeknown to the boy’s mother, the defendant then took him to Brighton and in particular, to the cliffs.

“That afternoon, the boy fell 100 feet from the cliff edge onto the concrete under walk below. Miraculously, he did not die, but was very seriously injured and had to be airlifted to hospital in London. Initially, it was believed that what had happened to him was a dreadful accident – but investigations revealed a different and much darker picture.”

Anthony Boulding, a witness to the horrific events, saw that the boy was “balancing, and seemed to be having fun” at the time – before Stocks threw him off the edge.

Ms Johnson continued: “Mr Boulding heard shouting as if a child was ‘mucking around’, then shouts and then a small shape fall as if thrown from the cliff. This was followed by a shriek. He did not immediately appreciate that the small shape he saw fall was in fact a human being – it was the boy.”

Because of the “extremely high impact trauma” the boy suffered, he does not have any memory of the fall itself, the jury heard. The prosecutor went on: said: “The child described the cliff top and seeing the beach below. He remembered looking down and seeing how steep it was.

“He thought he stood there for between three and five minutes. He remembered the two wires of the fence in front of him. He could touch them and they came to waist level and he could see the beach over them. The defendant was walking with him and stood a little behind him. He explained to the police ‘I either slipped or I got pushed’. The next thing he remembered was being in hospital.”

Stocks was arrested again on May 12 last year on suspicion of sexual activity with a child under 13 and rape of a child under 13.

The trial continues.

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