Rape accused rushed to hospital during trial

James Moore took ill as his alleged victim told a jury at the High Court in Livingston how he’d sexually abused her when she was aged six.

He was taken to a waiting room where he could be seen shaking uncontrollably as court police officers summoned medical help.

After giving the 62-year-old emergency treatment, paramedics walked him to a waiting ambulance which took him to hospital.

His alleged victim – a nursing assistant now aged 51 – gave evidence that Moore groped her while he and his wife were babysitting her at her former home in Blackburn, West Lothian, in the early 1970s.

She claimed Moore was reading her and her five year-old sister a bedtime story when he slipped his hand into her underwear under the bed covers and sexually assaulted her.

She said she wet herself as a result of the “shock” and got up to go to the toilet. When she returned to her bedroom Moore was no longer there.

The woman, who can’t be named for legal reasons, said she was too scared to tell other members of her family at the time, although she eventually told her mother.

She told the court: “It’s just a thing that you don’t forget. I’ll always remember all my life. It’s like yesterday. I remember myself that I always said, ‘I’m feared to die’.”

Moore, from Falkirk, denies a total of 12 charges.

He is alleged to have raped a woman on two occasions at houses in Whitburn and Carronshore between 1976 and 2000.

He is also accused of using lewd, indecent and libidinous practices towards the woman who gave evidence against him when she was in his care between 1971 and 1973.

He faces three charges of using lewd and indecent sexual behaviour towards two under-age girls aged between 11 and 13 at addresses in Stirlingshire and West Lothian on various occasions between January 1985 and June 1989.

He is also charged with assaulting the two girls and a teenage boy by striking them on the legs or body with a belt to their injury.

He further denies kicking a 16-year-old girl on the body to her injury at an address in Whitburn between April 1997 and April 1998.

Finally, Moore faces an allegation that he breached the peace on various occasions over a 24-year period by throwing food and drink at walls, shouting and swearing, smashing windows and calling people derogatory names.

Moore, of Thornbridge Square, Falkirk, pleads not guilty to all the charges and has lodged a special defence claiming that any sexual contact with the alleged rape victim was consensual.

The trial continues