-Mirror

North Wales: A 10-year-old boy raped another pupil in a school toilet after watching internet pornography, a court has been told.

A prosecuting barrister told a jury it was "frankly troubling" to find allegations "of crime of this level against someone so young".

Karl Scholz said the jury may conclude that the availability of pornography on the internet was behind the incident.

That was almost certainly the case, he said, adding that the boy was "acting out" what had been seen.

"It is that which may lie behind the corruption of the minds of the people involved in this case," Mr Scholz told the jury in the opening of the trial.

Both the alleged victim and the defendant had viewed pornography, it was claimed.

The accused - who is not sitting in the dock but with his mother and solicitor behind his barrister - is now aged 12.

He is alleged to have raped another pupil in a toilet at a North Wales primary school.

He has pleaded not guilty to the rape of another 10-year-old boy and a second charge of inciting the boy to engage in sexual activity at the school.

The court heard that last year the complainant was spoken to by teachers following rumours in the school of sexual behaviour with his "girlfriend".

It was then that he disclosed what the defendant was alleged to have done to him.

That night he told his parents and the matter was reported to the police.

Interviewed, the complainant told how he hated the defendant, who he described as "Mr Goody-Good" in front of teachers but who in the playground "speaks trash, rubbish" and was "mean and rude".

Mr Scholz said the first incident occurred when the defendant asked him during an English class if he wanted to have sex with him.

"It was an usual question for a ten-year-old boy to ask another," the prosecutor said.

After the lesson it is claimed he was attacked in the toilet.

Interviewed, the defendant said he had never asked him for sex and nothing sexual had happened between them, he said.