An alleged child abuse victim has claimed that she was so angry with her tormentor that she nearly caused a scene in a pub more than 15 years later.

The former resident at a children's home in Harrogate, alleged at York Crown Court, that friends had to take her out of the Shepherd's Dog in the town to prevent an incident.

"I was boiling inside," the woman alleged, giving evidence against Michael Raine, 36.

She claimed that he indecently assaulted her on a regular basis for about a year in the late seventies when she was aged nine or slightly older, and he was in his mid-teens.

When she complained to his mother, Isabella, who was her house parent at the home, she was made to sleep on a mattress as a punishment.

After she left the home in the early eighties, she did not see Michael Raine again until a chance encounter in the pub.

"I said: 'Do you remember me. He just looked blank'," she claimed.

"I said, 'I remember you. I'm not scared of you now'.

"My friends made me go to the toilet because at the time I had a pint glass in my hand. I was thinking silly thoughts, you may think".

She alleged she told Raine: "I am going to say what you did to me."

She alleged that her friends took her away from the pub because they could see what was going to happen.

A few months later, after visiting Raine's parents, she went to the police.

Raine, of Swinton Court, Harrogate, denies two charges of indecently assaulting her and one of gross indecency with another girl.

Det Sgt John White, of North Yorkshire Police, said that the girls' complaints started an investigation which was handled by a police Family Protection Unit until "it was realised it was a larger inquiry."

The woman alleged that the assaults took place in her bedroom at the now-closed National Children's Home in Harrogate when Raine's parents Sidney and Isabella were house parents, and he lived with them there.

She claimed that after about a year of abuse, she complained to Mrs Raine.

"She 'lost it' and got me some nice punishments lined up from Sidney. I think on that occasion I slept for two weeks on a mattress in a corridor - it might have been in the bathroom," the woman alleged.

She claimed she was scared of Raine and that she saw Raine's father in bed with a third girl who lived at the home.

The jury was shown a letter the woman wrote to the other alleged victim after both had given statements to police.

In it, she urged the second victim to pursue her allegation to trial.

The jury heard that the second victim had made a sex allegation against Michael Raine in 1994, but did not take it further then.

The trial continues.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.