A 63-YEAR-OLD record producer who is accused of sexually assaulting an aspiring teenage singer told a jury he lied to police because he was scared witless'.

Hilary Budgen, who works under the name Rob Gem, said that he denied taking indecent pictures of the 14-year-old girl because he feared police would think she was telling the truth if they knew about the images.

Under cross-examination by Don Tait, prosecuting, the grandad told Swindon Crown Court that he had not used a program called Cyber Scrub on his computer days before he was arrested.

Budgen was being questioned about why he said to police that he had not taken any inappropriate pictures of the youngster.

Speaking from the witness box, he said: "I had been locked up. I was totally scared. I am still totally scared. I was accused of terrible things.

"I didn't want to say I had taken those photographs because I thought they would think that I had done something else. I was absolutely scared witless."

He agreed with Mr Tait that when he told police that it was morally wrong' to take provocative pictures and that he hadn't done so he was not being honest.

Mr Tait then quizzed him about whose idea it was for the schoolgirl to sit with her legs apart showing her knickers for him to take the pictures.

"You didn't tell her how to pose?" he asked. Budgen replied "No". Mr Tait said: "All done by a 14-year-old?" to which he said "Yes".

Mr Tait asked him if he worried that his wife, who was downstairs in the kitchen with the door open, would see what was happening.

Budgen said: "It was a dreadful situation. I didn't want to take the photographs. Why would I want them?"

Mr Tait then asked whether, as a man in his 60s, he had told the child that it was wrong for him to take such pictures. "Have you ever tried to tell a 14-year-old she can't do something," Budgen replied.

"You must understand if you are going to record something you want them in the best state of mind so they can concentrate on singing."

Asked if it slipped his mind that she was a 14-year-old girl, he said: "She is a 14-year-old girl with the mind of I don't know what. She's a person who wanted her own way and invariably got it."

Budgen also insisted that other pseudo images where the heads of women, including the teenager, had been superimposed on to pornographic images were nothing to do with him.

In spite of the original pictures, from which the faces and the naked bodies were cut, being found in the memory of his machines, he insisted the porn had nothing to do with him.

He said he had been sent pictures by email and on CDs in the post which had the montages with faces which had been lifted from his website.

Budgen, of Barrington Close, Liden, denies two counts of sexual activity with a child and inciting a child to commit a sex act.

He also denies three counts of making indecent pseudo photographs of a child. He has admitted three counts of making indecent images. One charge of meeting a child after sexual grooming and one charge of possessing indecent images of a child are not being continuted as the offences are encompassed in the other charges.

  • The trial continues