Brighton cliff attempted murder trial enters second day

Anthony Stocks, of Iceni Close, Goring, is on trial at Oxford Crown Court accused of attempting to murder a 10-year-old boy after he tried to ‘intervene’ with Stocks allegedly assaulting an underage girl.

Reportedly, the girl was being ‘groomed’ by the 54-year-old in early 2020s but the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had tried to stop it.

Read the opening of the trial here: Man 'threw' boy, 10, from cliff so he could continue sexual abuse of child

Stocks allegedly confided in the girl, who also cannot be named for legal reasons, that he was going to try and kill the boy by throwing him off a cliff.

During the trial on Tuesday (May 21), the jury heard a recorded police interview with the girl who said she had tried to warn the boy about Stock’s alleged plan.

Anthony Stocks (Image: NQ)

She said: “I told [the boy] not to go but he wanted to. [Stocks] said he was going to push [the boy] off the cliff, he wanted to get rid of him so we could be together so [the boy] doesn’t interfere with us.

“[I felt] worried. It was a few days before [when Stocks] told me. It was to get him to stop following us.”

The girl said she called the defendant ‘about 10 times' while he was in Ovingdean, Brighton, on September 24, 2022.

“I just said are you okay, don’t do it,” the girl told police. “He just said, ‘Yeah I’m going to do it’.”

READ MORE: Man cleared by jury of child abuse charges

The girl also told police about Stocks reportedly contemplating throwing the boy off a quarry in Chinnor several weeks earlier.

She said: “I was at the bottom because I was scared because I thought it was actually going to happen and I didn’t want to see it.”

The jury heard the girl claim that Stocks would sometimes ‘follow her to the park’ and used to ‘kiss and touch’ her on her ‘private parts’ which made her ‘feel angry and uncomfortable’.

She had told the boy about the alleged assaults and when asked why she confided in him, she said: “[The boy] was there to help me. He almost saw. [He] jumped out and [Stocks] stopped.”

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Stocks has denied four counts of sexual assault of a child under 13, one charge of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, and one count of rape of a child.

The defendant also denied one charge of attempted murder and an alternative charge of cruelty to a person under 16.

The trial continues.