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	Verger Groomed Server, Court Told Wales Online April 5, 2011 http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/04/05/verger-groomed-server-court-told-91466-28460786/ A FORMER head verger at a Welsh cathedral singled out a young altar server for sexual abuse, it was claimed in court yesterday. Colin James Adams was married with three young children and living in a tied church cottage on the Cathedral Green at Llandaff in Cardiff at the time offences are said to have been committed in the 1990s. He is now 58 and a verger at St Nicholas' Cathedral in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. When he was arrested in January 2010 and questioned, he said he had been a mentor to the boy and denied there had ever been any sexual activity between them. In a trial expected to last a week, he has pleaded not guilty to seven charges of indecent assault and one of a serious sexual assault. Susan Ferrier, prosecuting, said: "The boy was young and vulnerable and Colin James Adams spotted him and targeted him. He encouraged the teenager to spend time with him, took him on trips and forged a close relationship with him. It was manipulation and grooming of a young lad so that he could be used sexually." Ms Ferrier said the alleged victim had lived with his dreadful memories for years before finally finding the courage to make a complaint to the police. "In cases of this nature that is not unusual," she said. Adams' job with the Llandaff diocese took him to other churches outside Cardiff. The complainant, now in his 30s, said that was how he first met the verger. The jury were shown a video of his interview with a police officer, made last year. In it he alleges he was first assaulted on a visit to London. "It was in a quiet area of Southwark Cathedral," he said. "He ran his finger down my back then put his hand down my trousers, trying to touch me. What sticks in my mind is the smell of church flowers and as he leaned forward I could feel the bristles of his beard on my neck. He said it was important to be close in a friendship." The witness alleged that when he first became a server, the verger would turn up earlier and earlier, he added. "He would put his arms around me to give me a thank you hug for all I did and started giving me little things – books and things to stimulate my interest... "He was trying to encourage me to have more and more contact. In Llandaff [Cathedral], we would have to go under the organ loft. I would go first and it would be a tight squeeze. "Every chance he had he would try to get closer – feeling and groping me. He asked me to go on trips, saying he could take children for £1 on his family railcard and he started to get more touchy-feely and then more physical." The witness claimed Adams finally had sexual intercourse with him. After that he said, he distanced himself from the church. Ms Ferrier said: "None of the defendant's advances were welcome – the boy trusted him and knew little of the world at the time. It ended with forceful, degrading acts on the steps of a vestry." Adams had said he was homosexual in a statement. "It is not suggested by the prosecution, that because somebody is homosexual it makes it more likely they are going to commit offences of this type."
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