Anne Lakey: Headteacher took 15-year-old boy's virginity in a tent during a group camping trip, trial hears

Lakey was a teacher at a school in Sunderland at the time of the alleged offences, in the late 1980s

Anne Lakey arriving at Teesside Crown Court (Owen Humphreys/PA Wire)

A headteacher on trial for multiple counts of indecent assault allegedly took one of her victims’ virginity in a tent on a group camping trip while her husband slept nearby, a court has heard.

Anne Lakey, 55, from Stanley, County Durham, denies 13 charges of indecent assault against two teenage boys in the late 1980s. Six counts refer to a boy who was aged 13 or 14 and the rest to a boy aged 15 at the time.

The older victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told Teesside Crown Court that he followed Lakey’s instruction and crept into the teacher’s tent to have sex for the first time, while her then husband Eamonn Toland slept in another tent close by.

The man described how he waited until the early hours of the morning to leave his tent and sneak in to Lakey’s. He called the entire evening “a bit of a tumultuous night”.

“On the one hand, I was happy with me little self that I managed to lose my virginity before I was 16, which seemed really important at the time,” he told the court.

“On the other hand, everything was over so quickly. It should have been more interesting than that. It was a bit of a confusing mix of emotions as I left the tent,” he added.

He claimed they continued to have sex at Lakey’s home, in the bed she shared with her husband, while her husband was away.

The man then claimed that in late 2012, after years of having no contact with each other, Lakey called him out of the blue to ask him to lie to the police.

Lakey had told him that her career had gone “really well” and that she was now the headteacher of two schools, but that someone had emailed the school with an accusation and she was now suspended, he claimed.

The man said that Lakey had told police she had had sex with the claimant legally at the age of 18, and alleged that she asked him to corroborate this information should police ever question him.

He claimed Lakey said early on in the conversation that “I’ve definitely not had sex with any other children since,” but the man said the phone call “really summed up the whole thing”.

“Here is somebody who has not spoken to me for 20 years who thought she could get me to pick up the phone and lie to the police, 20 years after.

“If that doesn’t give you an idea of the control she had over us lads, I don’t know what would,” he told the court.

Earlier in the hearing, the younger complainant’s mother described to the court the moment her son disclosed to her that Lakey had allegedly taken his virginity illegally.

Speaking to his mother a decade after the event, when he was in his mid-20s, the victim said: “That cow took my virginity off me when I was 13,” she told the court.

His mother said her son had “tears rolling down his face” when he told her what happened.

“It was unreal, I thought I couldn’t be hearing this,” she told the jury. “I was just so shocked, I was totally horrified.

“That’s my child. He was a child, not a young man, not an adult,” she said.

The trial continues.

Additional reporting by PA