Man accused of drugging boy after abduction

The 11-year-old fell asleep on a bed in the home of Lee Adams after being given a drink of black coffee and some pop, Nicholas Askins, prosecuting, told Leeds Crown Court yesterday.

He claimed Adams administered an unidentified substance with the intention of “stupefying or overpowering” the youngster so he could engage in sexual activity with him.

Mr Askins said when police officers forced the door of the flat after the boy did not go home and the alarm was raised, they found him still asleep.

He appeared disorientated and felt dizzy and nauseous. Paramedics called to the flat also noticed his pupils were dilated.

“The prosecution’s case is that these were symptoms of him having been drugged.”

Mr Askins told the jury DNA evidence of saliva on the boy’s underpants and Adams’s tracksuit bottoms indicated sexual contact between them.

The boy also complained of soreness where it was alleged Adams had touched him and he had also left a “lovebite” on his neck.

Mr Askins said when the pair had got to the building where Adams lived he had told the boy to wait in the communal entrance while he got his bike inside telling him “stay there or I’ll kill you”.

Once inside the flat Adams had locked the front door to the flat and put the keys in his pocket.

Adams, 45, of Moor Crescent Chase, Beeston, Leeds, denies kidnap, false imprisonment, administering a substance with intent and sexual assault on October 14 last year.

The boy, now 12, told the jury over a video link he was “dragged” back to the flat after Adams approached him on a bike while he was out playing with a friend, and asked if he wanted an X-Box 360.

He said Adams then grabbed his wrist. “I said ‘Let go’. He said, ‘You’re not getting out of this.”

The boy said Adams told him he had watched him before.

Inside the flat he said the coffee he was given “didn’t taste right”. He was also given some diluted pop while they were watching television and soon after he fell asleep.

When he was woken up he said his trousers were pulled up further than he usually had them.

He said he also had a headache when he woke up.

Under cross-examination by John Swain, for Adams, he denied he went to the defendant’s flat of “his own free will”.

“I weren’t,” he said. “I was frightened, I didn’t want to go.”

Asked about CCTV showing him walking beside Adams during the journey to the flat he said that only happened after Adams threatened to kill him.

Mr Swain suggested to the boy that he was not telling the truth, that he had gone to the flat to play on an X-box and collect a Leeds United shirt for his friend but after falling asleep realised he would be in trouble.

In re-examination, Mr Askins asked the boy if he had seen an X-box at the flat or any Leeds United kit. “No” said the boy. The boy’s friend told the jury Adams had first approached them as they were playing earlier that afternoon but his mother had shouted at him to stay away from him and Adams had left.

The boy said that was because his father had told him he did not like the look of Adams.

About 20 minutes later Adams returned, having changed his clothes. He said that was when there was a conversation about the X-box and his friend went off with Adams.

The boy said he waited for his friend to return for more than 20 minutes but went home when he did not come back.

Later that evening the boy’s sister came to his home looking for him and he told her that he had not come back from Adams’s home and the police were then involved.