A man has gone on trial accused of sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl and raping a married woman.
The younger of the two alleged victims – now a 50-year-old grandmother – told the High Court in Livingston that George Townsley sexually abused her three times after inviting her to go for walks with him at a Perthshire fruit farm.
She said the first three walks passed uneventfully, but on the fourth he took her into a wooded area, pushed her to the ground 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.”
The woman said she told her mother, who warned Townsley he would be arrested if he touched her again.
“We’re from a travelling community and we don’t talk about stuff like this, but five six years ago I took a mini breakdown about what happened to me when I was a child,” she said.
She said she eventually went 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.
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 the sexual offences were committed at a farm near Blairgowrie, Perthshire, and the assaults either in the same area or in Dundee.
Townsley denies all the charges. The trial, before Lord Uist, continues.
