A MAN has told a Royal Court jury that he never noticed anything concerning in the behaviour of a 56-year-old charged with several counts of indecent assault.
The witness was giving evidence on the fourth day of the trial of Ricky Derek Knight.
Mr Knight faces 14 charges of indecent assault or committing acts of gross indecency against two girls under 16, which he denies.
The acts are said to have taken place over a five-year period.
Advocate Adam Harrison, defending, called a witness to the stand yesterday who was present when some of the offences were alleged to have taken place. The witness said: ‘It was a bit rough, to be fair’ and it ‘wasn’t always a barrel of laughs’.
He added that it was a ‘two-way street’ between the defendant and the girls. He told the jury that he had never noticed anything which caused him concern or shocked him.
The man said he had not heard Mr Knight make comments on the girls’ bodies, as alleged by a prosecution witness, but he did say that the defendant’s language was ‘colourful’.
Another witness previously told the jury that Mr Knight called the older girl ‘fat’ and ‘disgusting’ and commented on the younger one’s breasts.
The court heard on Monday that Mr Knight denied making comments about the girl’s breasts.
Summing up the prosecution’s case, Crown Advocate Simon Thomas said that both girls had nothing to gain from making up their accounts of alleged abuse and that both had detailed a number of separate and independent incidents of abuse throughout the five-year period. Advocate Harrison argued that the evidence was ‘nowhere near strong enough’ to convict the defendant of the charges against him.
The jury is expected to retire today to consider its verdicts.
