MIRROR
“That afternoon, the boy fell 100 feet from the cliff edge onto the concrete under walk below. Miraculously, he did not die, but was very seriously injured and had to be airlifted to hospital in London. Initially, it was believed that what had happened to him was a dreadful accident – but investigations revealed a different and much darker picture.”
It is alleged Stocks threw the youngster off the cliff in Brighton, East Sussex, an incident said to have happened after Stocks had previously taken the boy to a quarry in Oxfordshire and “contemplated” pushing the boy off a cliff there, before changing his mind.
But in early 2020, it is alleged the defendant tried to kill the boy in Brighton. Anthony Boulding, a witness, was walking with a friend towards the cliff stairwell when he saw the boy and the defendant walking on the grass verge and heading towards the top of the cliffs.
“The boy had his hands out as if he was balancing; he seemed to be having fun. The defendant was walking behind him and was matching his pace,” said the prosecutor.
“Mr Boulding and his friend walked down the steps to the concrete underpass on the beach. About 10 minutes later Mr Boulding heard a noise. Mr Boulding looked up to the top of the cliff and saw a figure on the wrong side of the fence.
“Another figure stood behind. Mr Boulding heard shouting as if a child was ‘mucking around’, then shouts and then a small shape fall as if thrown from the cliff. This was followed by a shriek. He did not immediately appreciate that the small shape he saw fall was in fact a human being – it was the boy.”
The jury heard that Mr Boulding and his friend made their way back to the under cliff and noticed a crowd of people. When they got closer, they realised they were surrounding the child who was “clearly in a bad state” – but still alive. The prosecutor added that Stocks did not run away from the scene but had instead joined the various members of the public that came to the child’s aid.
Ms Johnson continued: “The defendant spoke to a number of people at the scene, civilians and members of the emergency services. He was not consistent in his account of what had happened. Emma Betts recalls seeing the defendant approach the boy and say ‘I told him not to go near the edge.’ The defendant then sat down, rolled a cigarette and got out his phone.”
The court heard the child’s injuries were very serious, including several deep lacerations to his scalp, abrasions to his chest, multiple bruises, multiple fractures to his left arm, and deformity to his left shoulder.
The prosecutor told the jury the child was “conscious and in enormous pain” following the fall. He was sedated, his arm placed into a splint and he was airlifted by helicopter to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London where he had to be resuscitated, before he was placed in a medical coma.
Because of the “extremely high impact trauma” the boy suffered, he does not have any memory of the fall itself, the jury heard. The prosecutor went on: said: “The child described the cliff top and seeing the beach below. He remembered looking down and seeing how steep it was.
“He thought he stood there for between three and five minutes. He remembered the two wires of the fence in front of him. He could touch them and they came to waist level and he could see the beach over them. The defendant was walking with him and stood a little behind him. He explained to the police ‘I either slipped or I got pushed’. The next thing he remembered was being in hospital.”
The defendant, who lives in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, was first arrested shortly after the fall on suspicion of child neglect and causing or allowing the serious injury of a child.
He told the police that he had asked the boy if he wanted to go to the seaside, before taking him to the top of the cliffs near the Brighton Marina. The defendant said he sat on a bench and smoked a cigarette while the boy stood by the edge of the cliffs.
The prosecutor continued: “Mr Stocks had his head down and suddenly, the boy was gone. The defendant thought he was hiding. He ran and found him at the bottom of the cliff.”
