A FORMER priest abused a boy at vicarages in Bolton and Atherton and allowed youths to engage in sexual behaviour at his home, a court heard.

Frank Baldwick denies two counts of indecent assault against a boy when the child was aged between 11 and 13.

GUILTY: Former priest who abused a boy in vicarages in Atherton and Bolton

The accusations are said to date from the late 1970s when Baldwick — now aged 91 — was the Church of England vicar of St Michael’s, Great Lever, and then St Anne’s Hindsford, Atherton.

A jury of nine men and three women heard Baldwick’s alleged victim tell how he had been taken to the St Michael’s vicarage in Green Lane, Great Lever, by an older boy called Barry Arthurs.

There Baldwick — who describes himself as a naturist — flattered him and gave him crisps and pop, Bolton Crown Court heard.

The boy was shown pornographic magazines before the vicar, then in his early 50s, indecently assaulted him.

After Baldwick moved to be vicar of St Anne's in 1978, Arthurs, who indecently assaulted the boy himself over a period of five years, then took him to see the priest again.

Arthurs has already admitted seven counts of indecent assault against the boy.

Giving evidence in court the victim, now a 49-year-old man, told how Arthurs took him on a bicycle ride to the Hindsford vicarage where he was abused again by the priest.

He revealed who his abuser was in a counselling session in 2013 and Baldwick, now of Lady Bay Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham, was questioned by police.

Baldwick, whose wife died in 1975 from motor neurone disease, said in court that he had had sexual relationships with men when he served in the RAF during the war and then again after he was widowed, engaging in mutual masturbation.

But he denied he has touched under age boys — describing them as "prison fodder."

However, he told officers that he had watched another boy masturbate in upstairs rooms at the vicarages.

Baldwick told police: "I got a certain pleasure of watching him — not so much masturbating but seeing his body.

"I thought seeing a young body is rather nice, isn't it?

"Sometimes clergy can come over as very miserable devils. I was just trying to be liberal and virtually took very little notice."

He added that he was a naturist and so seeing a body was "natural".

He added: "Whether the boy got pleasure from the act of masturbating while I was there, that's the only thing I can assume.

"But to me it gave me a great sort of joy and a clean joy — a natural sort of joy."

The case continues.