Dana Rosemary Scallon’s brother admitted abusing a girl for 12 years but claimed “God had forgiven him” as he apologised to the girl’s father, a court in Britain heard today.
John Brown (60), a brother of the Eurovision winner and former MEP, is accused of indecently assaulting two young girls under the age of 13 and 16 in the 1970s.
There were emotional scenes on the fourth day of the 60-year-old’s trial at Harrow Crown Court this morning as the jury heard testimony from both parents of the first alleged victim.
The girl’s mother denied a suggestion under cross-examination that the accusations were false, and the court heard evidence from the victim’s father about how he learned of the alleged abuse.
The first alleged victim claims she was assaulted by Mr Brown on four occasions in the UK and United States. The court was told the abuse had been kept secret from the girl’s father for more than three decades, but he was finally told by his wife in 2005.
Shortly after that conversation in the kitchen of their Iowa home, the court heard how Mr Brown called the father to apologise.
The father said: “I was in shock. It was someone I had trusted, someone I had known. I asked who else knew and… [my wife] … said the first person she told was Dana.
“I said, ‘Everyone around me knew and I didn’t?’ I went to talk to…[my daughter]…I didn’t ask about the details, I didn’t care about the details. I apologised to her, I wasn’t there for her as a father.
“I came back home and went outside and broke down. I was outside for a while and when I came back in…[my wife]…said John was on the phone. It was like a roller coaster.
“I [took the phone and] said ‘Yes John?’. He said ‘I want to apologise for abusing your daughter over the period of 12 years. God has forgiven me and I want you to as well. I said ‘John, it is too soon, I have just found this out’.”
Mr Brown then asked to continue working in their joint business, but the father told him to “stay away” from the business, his family and his home.
The court earlier witnessed a heated exchange between the mother of the victim and Mr Brown’s barrister, Martyn Bowyer, who said the allegations have been fabricated to back up defamation proceedings against Dana by the victim, now 47, and her mother.
One of the offences is alleged to have taken place during a solo visit by Mr Brown to the girl’s family home in the US around 1977.
The prosecution claims the family went on a boat trip, leaving the alleged victim and the accused alone with her baby brother in the house for the weekend.
The girl’s mother claims she was told about the abuse when she returned home and confronted Mr Brown before driving him to the airport the following day to send him home.
But Mr Bowyer presented photographs to the girl’s mother from that year which appeared to show Mr Brown had taken his then girlfriend and now wife Patricia, known as Pat, with him.
Mr Bowyer, addressing the girl’s mother, said: “You see the point, that if his girlfriend Pat was with him, then, unless she went on the boat with you, then he wouldn’t have been alone in the house at all.
“And if she was with him when you told him to pack his things, then she has been left out of the story.
“You didn’t confront him. You didn’t drive him to the airport. It didn’t happen.”
In a raised voice and with tears in her eyes, the mother replied: “She wasn’t with him. He molested my daughter in my home. I drove him to the airport.
“It did happen. You were not there, Pat was not there. Molestation of my daughter.”
Mr Brown, of Lilly Hill Road, in Bracknell, Berkshire, denies the allegations.
The case, which is expected to last into August, was adjourned till Monday.