Former Easter Ross football coach on trial accused of sexual offences against children
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A teenage boy was abused by his football coach for years after joining a local soccer team, a jury has been told.
The schoolboy claimed his penis would be grabbed down his boxer shorts during regular play-fighting with 33-year-old Mark McAuley in his Easter Ross home outside Tain and his sister's house in Dunfermline.
He also told a jury at Inverness Sheriff Court that he could not move: "I was pinned down. He was too strong."
He added that he would regularly get leg massages from McAuley which extended all the way up to expose his penis, sometimes when they shared a bed together overnight.
The boy confirmed he never told anyone, including his mother, until he confided in a friend whose mum contacted police.
He explained to fiscal depute Susan Love, who asked why he didn't say anything: "I just thought it was normal. I know now that it was wrong. I have had a lot of years to think about it."
The witness stared throughout his evidence at McAuley in the dock who hardly made eye contact with his accuser.
The jury heard that the boy claimed he was still in primary school when the sexual contact began and it carried on into his early teens.
Police became involved in 2020 and the boy was interviewed.
Questioned by McAuley's defence counsel, Wendy Culross, the boy denied he had been over-reacting to what was happening and insisted there had been sexual contact.
It was the first day of McAuley's trial, where he faces a total of nine charges of indecent assaults against four different boys.
McAuley, who also had connections to Celtic, Dunfermline and Alloa Athletic, ran children’s after school football coaching sessions across Ross-shire and Sutherland with his Do Soccer organisation.
He is accused of sexually assaulting two children under the age of 13 and two charges of engaging in sexual activity with boys under the age of 16.
McAuley also faced three charges of directing a verbal sexual communication to a child and one of causing a child to hear a verbal sexual communication, as well as a single charge of causing a child to look at a sexual image.
The offences are alleged to have taken place at addresses in Tain, Dunfermline and Edinburgh, as well as in a vehicle on the A9 and elsewhere between February 2016 and August 2019.
The charges allege that McAuley, of Pitdinnie Place, Dunfermline, massaged boys legs, asked them to remove their clothing and tried to get them to share his bed while he wore only his underwear.
He is also accused of repeatedly pinning a child down and putting his hand down their trousers to touch their private parts, pushing a child’s shorts up to expose his private parts and photographing a child while he was asleep.
It is further alleged that he described sexual acts to children as well as describing a sexual image to one child and sending an image of a naked woman to another.
The trial continues.
