A former leader of North Lanarkshire Council has gone on trial accused of a catalogue of sexual offences against young boys and men over an 11 year period.
Jordan Linden is charged with offences relating to eight boys and five young men between the years 2011 to 2022.
At Falkirk Sheriff Court, the jury heard how the 30-year-old made a teenager feel “belittled”, “embarrassed” and “vulnerable” when they worked together in the Scottish Youth Parliament.
The alleged victim told the jury on Wednesday that he’d quit the organisation – intended to interest young people in democracy – because of Linden’s behaviour.
He said Linden, who later became leader of North Lanarkshire Council, phoned him in the night “panting”, sent him photographs of his genitalia, touched his buttocks, tried to pull his trousers down, and “poked and prodded him”, even in meetings, the man said.
The man, now 30, said he was 15 and met Linden the same night he was elected to the Youth Parliament in 2011. Linden was already a member, he said.
He said: “He was in your face, everything from touching your arms to asking really personal questions. There was no barrier that you’d have with a stranger.
“He’d almost always, and not just to myself, touch your arm, try to touch you on the stomach. He had a way of trying to touch your belt almost as if to pull your trousers down, [asking] what boxers you were wearing, tugging at the top”.
The man told prosecutor Alistair McDermid “it would be nigh on impossible” to put a number on how often it happened.
He said: “It was discomfortable. We were there in the Youth Parliament trying to make things better for people and we were continually accosted. I made it known it was uncomfortable, not just to Jordan but to the youth workers as well.
“Jordan touching you, on the face or the cheek or the neck – it was continuous. As the years went on it continued and I made myself more vocal that I didn’t want it to happen. It was relentless.”
The man said he made it “abundantly clear” that he was straight and didn’t want Linden touching him.
He said Linden’s actions were done openly, so it would have been clear for youth workers and others to see.
He said the incidents occurred in many locations, including Motherwell Civic Centre.
He said he told one youth worker, and the response was “it was ‘just Jordan’”.
He said in 2012/2013, Linden’s use of Facebook Messenger towards him “got out of hand.”
He said he would get phone calls in the middle of the night from Linden and received “more than a handful” of photographs of Linden’s genitals.
He said he was “disgusted” and had to have a conversation with his female partner, who noticed the photographs on his phone, that he was not in a relationship with Linden.
At a hotel in Ayrshire, where members of the youth parliament had been booked in to stay for an event, he found himself booked into a double room with Linden, despite having made it “abundantly clear” that should not happen.
He said the room arrangements were changed, but Linden was “laughing, saying he didn’t have any jammies with him, and we were booked into a double bed.”
He said what he termed “the Just Jordan behaviour” became more blasé as time went on, and made him feel vulnerable and “sick to the stomach.”
He eventually removed himself from the Youth Parliament to “take himself out of the equation.”
At Falkirk Sheriff Court, Linden, of Bellshill, represented by David Moggach KC, denies 24 charges of sexual assault, stalking, sexual communication and statutory breach of the peace.
In the case of one of the charges of sexual communication – sending images of his genitals to a 16 or 17-year-old boy at a time when Linden himself was 19 or 20 – he has given notice of a special defence of consent.
He also claims that two alleged sexual assaults on a 22 or 23-year-old man in Bellshill and in Glasgow in 2018 were consensual acts.
The Crown has also given notice that it intends to lead evidence outwith the charges of an incident involving a sleeping man at a youth hostel in Barcelona in September 2016, and an alleged assault at a hotel in Venice, Italy, in November 2018. Linden is said to have thrown a cup and its contents at a 22-year-old man.
The trial, before Sheriff Christopher Shead and jury, continues.
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