A heroic 10-year-old boy amazingly survived being thrown from a 100-foot cliff in the UK while trying to save his sister from a rapist, jurors were told.
Anthony Stocks, 54, pushed the boy to prevent him from stopping his abuse of the girl, who was under 13 and whom he allegedly said he planned to marry, according to the Brighton Argus.
“The defendant attempted to murder him by pushing him off the cliff,” prosecutor Zoe Johnson told Oxford Crown Court of the September 2022 attack on the abused girl’s brother, the Times of London said.
“That afternoon, the boy fell 100 feet from the cliff edge onto the concrete under walk below.”
A witness recalled seeing a “small shape fall as if thrown from the cliff” in Brighton, while others who rushed to his help said the boy was in a “bad state,” according to the UK Times.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, suffered injuries to his head, chest, shoulder and kidney — but somehow survived after being put in a medically induced coma, jurors heard.
Stocks had taken the boy and his sister to Brighton by train, then took them for a walk atop the chalk cliffs, prosecutors said. It was not immediately clear how he first knew the young siblings.
He later claimed he “didn’t see” the boy fall and only found him at the bottom of the cliff after he “heard a noise,” the Argus reported.
Witnesses who helped the boy said that Stocks joined them — then sat down, rolled a cigarette and took out his phone, jurors were told.
“‘I told him not to go near the edge,’” Stocks allegedly said, according to one of those giving evidence.
However, the boy’s sister later told cops that Stocks had hinted at plans to kill the boy — and even planned to push him from a quarry several weeks earlier, jurors heard.
“He wanted to get rid of him so we could be together so [the boy] doesn’t interfere with us,” the girl said, according to the Argus.
Stocks is accused of “grooming” the girl, and even telling a mental-health counselor “that one day he would get married” to her “and they would be together forever,” according to the Argus court reports.
Stocks has been charged with 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.
Stocks also faces one charge of attempted murder and an alternative charge of cruelty to a person under 16.
He has denied all the charges.
“I’m not sexually attracted to children and have not tried to have or instigated sexual activity with children,” Stocks said in a statement.