1001 Nights Cast

Transcript of evidence from day one in the trial of an ordinary man, for sexual errors.

The Accused Man’s Mother:
He was too beautiful to be a boy. All my friends would exclaim on first seeing him; ‘Oh! Look at the curls; what a pity he wasn’t born a girl.’ There was one very worrying event during his teenage years that remains in my memory. It involved the girl next door. Her brother came to our door late one evening and said our son had been spying on his sister as she undressed. I was very concerned and went to his room. He was in bed and when asked, denied any knowledge of the incident. He had a strange look about him. I didn’t really believe him.

The Accused Man’s Eldest Sister:
He says that we used to torture him but we only remember teasing him a bit. He was very sensitive and would take offence at the smallest thing. We used to tickle him until he collapsed and later when left in charge would chase him off to bed early so that he didn’t annoy us. We always suspected him of spying on us as we undressed for bed but never actually caught him at it. When he was 15 he came on very strongly to one of my girlfriends but she easily deflected him and thought it was quite cute.

The Accused Man’s Childhood Neighbour at Number 12:
He made up a sort of threesome. He and I and the girl at number 8 played together a lot before puberty. I remember, in particular, a childhood chant that we used against him:

‘Georgie porgy pudding and pie kissed the girls and made them cry; when all the boys came out to play Georgie porgy ran away’. He was pretty sensitive and used to go crazy when we did it. We were always too fast for him to catch and that seemed to make him even more annoyed. Before puberty we played early sexual games with him, like looking at and playing with each other’s private bits but put a quick stop to his more explicit sexual advances as we got older and he soon stopped playing with us altogether. I’m still sure it was he who was spying on me as I undressed one night but he denied it and I have no corroboration. It never happened again, I made sure of that but he would often look at me in a strange way.

The Accused Man’s Early Girlfriend
He was really good-looking and quite charming but all he seemed to want was sex. He would corner me into a private place and then, without asking or seeming to care what I wanted, he would try to have his way with me. I soon got tired of this and dumped him. He was offensive but never violent or too persistent.

The Accused Man’s First Sex Partner:
Boy was he quick. He manoeuvred me into having sex with him but I didn’t even know he had started before he was finished. Very unsatisfactory and quite rude, I thought. He seemed really ashamed and scuttled off.

The Accused Man’s First Long-term Girlfriend:
He was very handsome and our fathers were friends. The first time we really got talking, he was pressing me for sex but I told him I was menstruating. He said I was only making it up, but the next weekend I showed him different. He wasn’t very good and finished far too quickly. He was pretty good company most of the time except he was always contriving occasions for us to have sex. He seemed not to be interested in me other than for what he could get. I went out with him for seven or eight months but it didn’t get any better and eventually I told him it was finished. He did not seem too upset and I didn’t see much of him after that.

The Accused Man’s Wife of 30 Years:
He was my first real sexual partner and neither of us seemed to know what we were doing. It didn’t stop us though. I have always been pretty free in relation to sex. For instance, I have no qualms about walking around the house in the nude. I am aware of him sometimes staring at me but don’t care much. He can look as much as he likes because I am in control of what happens. The first time we were together I reckon he took advantage of my state of intoxication but since then I have not felt that he ever forced me to have sex with him. I got tired of the sameness over the years and he has never really been a particularly good lover. Great husband and father, can manage the household finances really well, like in a cash crisis, but pretty unadventurous in bed.