AN apologetic email alleged to have been sent by former Devizes mayor Tim Price was described as a gold mine to the victim of his alleged sexual abuse, a court was told today.

Price, 57, of Waiblingen Way, Devizes, is appearing at Salisbury Crown Court charged with historic sex crimes in relation to a youngster from Durrington.

He is on trial at Salisbury Crown Court where he denies abusing the boy multiple times between 1974 and 1979.

Stephen Dent, defending, claimed that the alleged victim was getting his own back on Price for bullying him as a child and he said the victim had a lot of axes to grind with Price.

He said an email sent by the victim, entitled ‘Your sexual abuse of an innocent child: Me’, which copied in members of Price's family and friends, was an attempt to bring Price down in the eyes of others.

Mr Dent argued that the family would have found out if he had gone to the police and that including them in the email was pure spite.

The victim, speaking from behind a screen, said: “I wanted them to know what had gone on and to turn their back on him. I had no intention of going to the police when I wrote the email.”

The jury was told Price replied just over an hour later in an apologetic email, entitled My Crimes.

The alleged victim told the court: “I didn’t think he would admit it, the reply came through on my phone. It was a shock I didn’t expect him to admit it.”

Mr Dent said: “You saw that as a gold mine, you thought, ‘I have got him now’, is that what you thought ‘got him now’?”

The alleged victim said that as for compensation, Price, who has been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, had not got any money.

The officer in the case, Detective Constable James Dubben, said: “He (the victim) was not aware he could make a compensation claim and he explained to me he did not intend to make one in the future.”

DC Dubben confirmed he had later outlined to the alleged victim that he would be able to claim compensation, the court was told.

The jury heard from the victim that when an adult told him to do something, you did it and that he could not tell anybody as it was horrendous, embarrassing and humiliating and still is.

Price has been charged with four counts of indecent assault and one of gross indecency with a child, under laws in place in the 1970s.

They are sample counts as the alleged victim says the abuse happened regularly for four years.

The trial continues.