Royal Navy officer serving life sentence for double-murder now accused of sexually assaulting four other men

A former Royal Navy petty officer jailed for life for the murder of two young men is now accused of sexually assaulting four other males including a 14-year-old boy in the 1990s, two of whom he had considered killing.

That is what a prosecutor has told a jury at Winchester Crown Court, as a trial begins for Allan Grimson - sentenced in 2001 for the murders of Nicholas Wright, a sailor, and Sion Jenkins in the late 1990s.

Grimson, 66, is now on trial for the rape and indecent assault of a teenage naval rating and indecent assault charges against three other male complainants dating between February 1994 and November 1999.

John Price KC, prosecuting, told the jury that when Grimson was interviewed about the case of Mr Wright in 1999, he provided details about some of the alleged offences.

He is accused of the indecent assault of the first victim between February 28 and December 31 1994 and of the second victim between September 30 and December 1, 1998. The defendant is accused of the rape and five indecent assault offences against the third complainant between February 1 and November 30, 1999.

He also faces four counts of indecent assault and a charge of taking an indecent photograph of the fourth complainant, the 14-year-old child, between March 26 and October 31, 1999.

Grimson was posted at the Royal Navy Firefighting School on Horsea Island, Portsmouth, at the time.

Mr Price said: “That posting brought Grimson into contact with many young males aged in their late teens, novices in the naval service subject to a regime of strict discipline and over every one of whom Allan Grimson exercised great authority by reason of his status in that service.

“He was a big powerful man and, within the service, admired as a capable instructor.”

Mr Price said that when police first interviewed the boy at his school, the complainant denied that anything had happened with the defendant but after Grimson was sentenced to life imprisonment for the two murders, he telephoned police and gave new interviews detailing the allegations against him.

He added: ““If anybody was ever tempted to suppose that Allan Grimson was exaggerating for effect when he spoke of considering killing (the boy) when (the boy) protested, they would need to re-evaluate that once knowing that Allan Grimson pleaded guilty to murdering those two men.

“That he had killed them in his flat at 143A London Road having invited them to go there with him and that on Allan Grimson’s own accounts, the killings had occurred amidst sexual assaults by him upon them both.”

Grimson, from Hollesley, Suffolk, has denied the charges.