A RETIRED police chief who is accused of indecently assaulting youngsters lavished gifts on a teenager during a four-year relationship, a court heard.
He gave the boy presents worth more than £5,000, including four holidays in Egypt, a scuba diving course, a car radio, and a trip to the Cotswolds.
Philip Gaisford is accused of five counts of indecent assault on him when the boy was aged 15 or 16.
The defendant faces 33 charges involving nine alleged victims, five of them under-age, with many of the offences said to have been perpetrated by the poolside of his former home in Colburn Avenue, Caterham
Gaisford, now 64, was a Metropolitan Police chief superintendent before he set up a scuba diving firm 14 years ago.
The boy told Lewes Crown Court that Gaisford would share his bedroom on overseas diving trips.
Sexual activity between then went on over a four-year period, a jury heard, but the boy insisted it was not consensual.
In cross-examination the alleged victim – now aged 21 – said Gaisford had turned against him when the youngster later spurned his advances and insisted he had a fianceé.
The young man, whose identity is protected for legal reasons, said: "I received a text message from him saying 'you have ruined it all, its all your fault'.
"I cancelled one Egypt trip because I did not want to end up in the same situation with him sharing my room."
He said Gaisford had demanded more than £5,300 in return for the gifts he had giving him.
The witness added: "I started getting threatening letters in which he said he would report me to police."
The court heard that Gaisford's wife contacted the youngster, urging him to contact police over what he had allegedly suffered.
She told him: "I'm divorcing him.
"The man is sick in the head, mind and body."
The court heard earlier that the defendant had offered youngsters sparkling wine at pool parties, encouraged them to strip off and adopted a no-trunks policy at his poolside sauna and changing area.
In letters to his wife, the defendant claimed to have the "Gaisford curse " of a high sex drive, said prosecutor Mark Gadsden.
He had told police that he had been spanked and sexually abused when he was a boy at boarding school.
Gaisford, who now lives at Crowborough in East Sussex, denies nine offences of indecent assault, two of rape, one count of indecency with a child, four of sexual activity with a child, four sexual assaults, three attempted sexual assaults and ten counts of possession of indecent photos and videos.
He also has also pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice after he allegedly sent an e-mail to the family of an alleged underage victim asking them not to co-operate with the police.
The trial is scheduled to finish in late May.
