A man accused of pushing a 10-year-old off a cliff edge claims he was only there to show him where a movie was filmed, a court heard.
Anthony Stocks, 54, is accused of attempting to murder the boy because he wanted him out of the way so he could be with his sister, who was under the age of 13 at the time.
Giving evidence yesterday (Wednesday, May 29), he told jurors he wanted to take the boy to the cliff edge at Ovingdean, East Sussex, to “see where they filmed Quadrophenia”. The 1979 film ends with protagonist Jimmy Cooper crashing his scooter over a cliff-top on the Brighton seafront.
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Stocks told Oxfordshire Crown Court the underage girl he allegedly raped had touched his penis when he didn’t want her to. Visibly shaking and fidgeting on the witness stand, he said: “I got fed up with it, with her touching me.”
He said the girl, who was under the age of 13 at the time, touched him on several occasions “with her hands and mouth” and that he would push her away and call her a “stupid little b*tch,” the jury heard.
He denies allegations he groomed and molested the girl. Asked by his barrister Martin Rutherford if he had done “anything bad or sexual” to the girl, Stocks replied: “No, never.”
He also told jurors he had never had a job – apart from when he worked as an extra in the 2016 fantasy blockbuster Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and the 2018 space Western film Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Justine Lindsley, a mental health support worker who has spoken regularly with Stocks since the incident, told jurors Stocks has never asked how the boy while he was recovering from his 100ft drop off a cliff.
(Image: Adam Gerrard / Daily Mirror)
Ms Lindsley said: “He talked about how he and the girl wanted to be together all the time and that, one day, they would be married.”
The 10-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was airlifted to St Georges’ Hospital in Tooting, London, and placed into a medical coma for several weeks.
Jurors heard previously the schoolboy had found out the defendant was molesting his underage sister and began to “interfere” by staying present with his sister at all times in a bid to stop the abuse from happening.
The court heard Stocks, took the boy to Ovingdean before pushing him over the edge of a cliff.
Stocks had reportedly told the girl before the incident: “I’m going to push him off a cliff. I want to get rid of him so we can be together,” jurors heard.
Stocks, of Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, denies attempted murder, rape of a girl under 13, and a string of sexual assaults on the same girl in the early 2020s.
The trial continues.