East Lancashire ‘domineering tyrant’ threatened midwife (From Lancashire Telegraph)
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East Lancashire ‘domineering tyrant’ threatened midwife
10:00am Wednesday 17th October 2012 in News By Wendy Barlow, Court reporter
MEDICAL professionals involved in the care of the family of a ‘tyrant’ East Lancashire father-of-14 told a jury he was a ‘bully’ and ‘aggressive’.
A hospital midwife who went to the man's home in the Burnley area with a colleague to deliver his step-daughter's baby said he swore and threatened them: “If anything happens to the baby, you two are dead.”
She said: “Nobody has ever spoken to me like that before.”
And a retired general practitioner, who was formerly the defendant's family doctor, told Burnley Crown Court: “He was domineering, abnormally domineering.
“Controlling is the correct word, I think.”
The court has earlier heard how the defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had a mistress as well as a wife and was said to have ‘totally dominated’ members of his family.
He is said to have raped his stepdaughter and had four children by her during the alleged sexual abuse.
The man, now 60, faces 42 allegations — seven counts of rape, seven of indecent assault, six of counts of assault causing actual bodily harm, 17 allegations of cruelty to a child, one of damage and four counts of false imprisonment.
The court has been told he had been found to be under a disability, was not fit to be tried and the jury would have to decide if he had done the acts complained of.
He has not attended court for the hearing. Louise Whaites, prosecuting, has alleged to the jury the defendant was a tyrant and treated a number of his children and his partners in ‘the most appalling of ways’, physically abusing them.
The midwife, Joanne Penrose, said of the birth, some years ago: “It is the only home birth in all the years that I have done it that I had asked for a supervisor to attend.”
She said: "Usually, people are glad that we are there. I had an impression we weren't really wanted."
Asked by Miss Whaites how the defendant had interacted with his step- daughter, Miss Penrose replied: "He acted like a birth partner."
Ahmed Nadim, for the defendant, asked the doctor under cross- examination if the step-daughter's mother had ever complained to him that her daughter was being sexually abused by the defendant. He replied: "No."
