A very delicate situation has just been revealed to me, a mate who is very local to me has been to magistrates court and has a date for crown court on charges of unlawful sex with a minor, 15 apparently. I have not broached the subject as I'm not sure if I want to get involved with it. I think we are the last in the village to find out. I am concerned that if he has done wrong we might be ostracized by association, this is a very small village. We currently have some of his livestock on our land and someone has already made comments to us. Should I drop him like a stone or stick by him, we aint close BFF's but he has always been good to us and helped me out of the crap a couple of times. I'm inclined to wait for the courts decision.
We bought a smallholding from a friend in 1993, there was an 87 year old guy called “Joe Naylor” who had a pigeon loft on one of the paddocks, we allowed him to stay rent free, the day after my youngest daughter’s 13th birthday Bev said “come on Emma, let’s go feed the horses, Emma refused, a couple of days passed & Emma seemed to have lost all interest, we eventually coaxed it out of her, Joe Naylor had tried to molest her, Bev & I both ran round to his house but he wasn’t in, we called the Police but as he’d not physically touched her their hands were tied, he had the audacity to come walking up my drive to his pigeon loft, I went out & told him in no uncertain terms to keep off my property, his son laughed & said “you can’t chuck him off he’s a tenant, I saw a solicitor & had to give him three Months notice, this was galling as we’d never taken a penny in rent from him, we had three Months of hell, people blocking our drive, spitting at us as we drove out of our drive, trying to harm our cats etc
A short while after we were in a local pub when one of his friends who had been one of the worst for the abuse approached & asked if we’d be in on Sunday, I asked him why & he said he wanted to speak to us, when he turned up he was nearly crying as he apologised, it turned out that Joe Naylor had watched as parents left a house for work & he let himself in & tried to molest the 15 year old daughter, the arsehole died before he went to prison