Lindy Leah denies an offence as she gave evidence to jurors
Lindy Leah(Image: ECHO/Warrington Guardian)
A care worker told jurors she did not “want a love bite” from a boy she looked after – insisting her “unprofessional and inappropriate” messages were “just banter”.
Lindy Leah, from Warrington, allegedly “fell in love with” the boy at a care home where she worked as deputy manager. She is accused of engaging in a sexual relationship with him.
At Liverpool Crown Court on Tuesday (August 5), the 44-year-old mum-of-two insisted she was “joking” when she suggested taking him on a “night away with balloons and flake”.
Leah was reported to have worn inappropriate and revealing outfits in his presence and allowed him to sleep in her bed, the Liverpool Echo reports.
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Giving evidence at her trial, Leah admitted she had been “incredibly naïve”, but insisted she had “never incited any sexual activity” with the youth.
Wearing a black jumper and with her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, Leah detailed how she had been employed as a carer for around three years after previously working in an administrative role.
‘It was incredibly naïve and unprofessional of me’
When her counsel Rebecca Filletti asked what training she had received prior to taking on the job, she said: “In my interview, I told them I was a mother. My training was based on being a mum, then just basic training you do through the company.
“I seen the kids as my children. I wanted to show them how kids thrive with a good mother around them. That’s the only way I knew to be. We tried to make it as homely as possible. That’s what we wanted for the children, to make it as much as a home environment as we could.”
Asked how she came to become the boy’s assigned key worker, Leah told the court: “He’d been in the home a few months. It seemed I was getting on with him and getting through to him the best. He was asked ‘who would you like to be your key worker?’, and he asked for me.”
When it was put to her that colleagues had described her as “feeling strongly for him” and “getting upset and emotional on behalf of him”, she replied: “I think it was incredibly unprofessional of me and inappropriate. I just took on this role of his mother. I really seen him as my son, my kid. I adored him. We were little besties. We were a little team.
“It was incredibly naïve and unprofessional of me to behave like that. I just got incredibly emotionally involved and looked at him like a son. He seemed so unloved by everyone around him. He just didn’t have a relationship with his family. He had no one. He seen me as his mother. I took on that role and really looked out for him.”
Liverpool Crown Court(Image: Liverpool Echo)
Questioned over the boy’s drug use, Leah said: “I was obsessed with ketamine. I didn’t want him killing himself. I was so scared of him becoming a smackhead. I’ve done so much training on it. I just wanted to fix it for him.”
Leah was also asked about an incident where she was alleged to have removed her jumper in front of the teenager after getting paint on her clothing and “started wobbling her belly and breasts to him”.
She said of this: “I don’t recall it. [Her colleague] was painting, so it could have happened. I would have took my jumper off. I always wear vest tops under my clothes. I wouldn’t have been wiggling my body around to anybody.”
Of a further accusation that she had “pulled up her bodysuit to show the shape of her vagina” in his presence, she added: “Never. I do believe, if there was other staff present, somebody would have said something. I would never do that.”
When referred to a series of stays at caravan parks in Cheshire and North Wales with the boy, Leah said: “It was organised professionally, through the company. It was a school holiday. He wouldn’t go camping. He agreed to do this. He wanted to go for steak, he wanted to do something nice.”
One such trip with him and another boy was said to have been designed to “distract them” from their plans to attend Parklife Festival in Manchester as they “weren’t old enough”. Ms Filletti went on to address a series of messages between Leah and the teen, saying: “‘Do you wanna go MFC [missing from care]?’, and then you’re talking about ‘love you so much, we can book somewhere for me and you’.”
Leah said of the day of this WhatsApp conversation: “I’d left work in the morning and I went to meet [the boy]. He’d left the house in a mood because I found a knife in his room and confiscated it. He asked me for money. I said no. As I went to walk off, he tried to stop me and grabbed my arm and cut my arm.
“He didn’t mean to do it. He got in my car with me. I drove back up to the Carr Mill Dam pub. He kept asking me and asking me for money. There was some money I’d taken from work, which I’d been owed, on the side and he ended up taking that money.”
‘I was joking’
Leah stated that she was later drinking in the pub when she sent the messages to the boy, adding: “I’d been drinking. It was unprofessional, and I shouldn’t have been messaging [the boy].
“I wanted to take him away, get him away from the things he was doing, the people he was around. I wanted him to have a nice night away and have some food, just getting away from all the things he was doing, just me and him.
“I thought it was best he went with me, so he could be himself. Just to get him away and let him be a kid. I was just trying to look out for him. I didn’t mean to say missing from care. I’d been drinking all day. I didn’t need to take him from care.”
Leah went on to add in a further message “red and silky with some balloons and flake”. She said of this: “I was joking. I have a dry sense of humour. He knows how I felt about drugs. I meant wine. I was being silly, dramatic. He knows I’m joking. I was making fun of balloons, is it nitrous oxide?”
The defendant went on to deny having taken drugs with the boy and, when asked whether there was “any intention for this trip to be sexual”, replied: “Absolutely not. No.”
Leah was then shown a picture which was recovered from her phone and showed the teen holding a balloon in his mouth. She said of this: “[The boy] doesn’t particularly like his teeth. That’s the only picture he would let me take, of him blowing up a balloon.”
Ms Filletti went on to ask, “in general terms, what do you think of those messages?”. Leah replied: “I think they’re completely unprofessional and inappropriate. I think I acted on fear. I think I was acting like a mother, or we were friends.
“[The boy] didn’t have anybody that cared about him. He was so alone. He just attached himself to me. I’m just a really loving person. I just loved him and really looked out for him. I thought he was my son. I thought he was my little friend. I had such an emotional, maternal attachment to him. It’s inappropriate. It’s not ok.
“My heart was in the right place. I actually thought I was doing the best job by him. There’s a reason why these rules were put in place. I broke them. I thought I was doing right by him. I thought I was showing him unconditional love by a mother. I was just digging holes.”
Of another message, in which Leah suggested she would return the boy’s mobile phone “for a love bite”, she said: “I’m joking with him. I think I’m funny. It was just banter. I don’t want a love bite [off the boy], I have a husband. He was covered in love bites, we’d all been making fun of him. I was just referring to it and laughing about it.”
Leah was then referred to another WhatsApp exchange in which she told the teenager: “Just listened to a song and it made me cry. Stupid love songs. It made me think of you, then it made me cry.”
Jurors were told that the song in question was Waterfalls by TLC, with Leah adding: “I tried to make him listen to it. It’s about a son who keeps doing wrong things and choosing the wrong path.”
Ms Filletti said she was “not going to ask her to sing” but asked her to recite some of the song’s lyrics. Leah said in response: “Something sad like, lonely mother staring out the window looking at the son. I can’t remember the rest. Just about how he keeps choosing the wrong path.”
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Leah accepted that she had met with the boy after being released on bail with conditions not to contact him following her first arrest in connection with the investigation, but said of this: “I seen him as my son. He was devastated and he needed me. He begged to see me. He’d been beaten up. He was scared. He needed his mum, and he considered me to be his mum. I shouldn’t have gone.”
Asked by Ms Filletti why she had chosen to give evidence, Leah appeared to become tearful as she responded: “I just wanted everyone to see that I really seen [the boy] as my son, and I wanted to have my opportunity to show everybody that I know I was unprofessional, I know I was dramatic and I know I was ridiculous, but I never incited any sexual activity with [the boy]. I just really, really thought I was his mum.
“I really thought I was a mum, and I thought I was helping him. I never meant for… I’m so sorry. I just wanted everyone to see or hear there was another… although the messages are really inappropriate, I really meant well.”
Leah denies one count of being a person in a position of trust causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. The trial, before Judge Brian Cummings KC, continues.