A youth football coach has denied sexually assaulting players during the 1970s and told a jury he would never harm boys because they were his family.
Anthony Mitchell ran a junior football team in Exeter from 1954 to 1980 but told Exeter Crown Court he had never sexually assaulted any of the boys who played for him.
Mitchell, aged 78, was jailed for a year in 1980 after he admitted drugging boys with Mogadon sleeping tablets and indecently assaulting them but he now insists he was innocent of those offences.
He says he only pleaded guilty because he felt like a father to the boys who had made the allegations and could not bear the thought of them having to give evidence against him in court.
Mitchell is on trial over serious sexual allegations made by two boys who played for his team in the 1970s, a few years before the other complaints were made.
The victims have told how they were abused while on overnight trips t in a converted ambulance which Mitchell used as a team bus.
One says he was repeatedly assaulted while sharing a sleeping bag with Mitchell while the other says he was drugged and abused during a team trip.
He has told the court he woke up in a semi conscious state to find himself stripped naked and being bent over a table in Mitchell's van.
Unmarried Mitchell, of Foxhayes Road, Exeter, denies two serious sexual offences which would now be classed as male rape, one of assault with intent to commit a similar offence, and three indecent assaults.
All the allegations date back to the late 1970s and involve boys who were aged 11 to 13 at the time.
Mitchell told the jury in the current case that he made admissions in interview because he was confused after being held in custody and moved from Dawlish to Exeter, Teignmouth and Newton Abbot.
He said he pleaded guilty to offences which he did not commit on the advice of a solicitor and because he wanted to spare the boys having to go to court to tell lies about him.
Mitchell denied abusing either of the two complainants in the current case, saying he had never touched them inappropriately.
He said:"That football club was my life. People used to say I always had youngsters around me. I always told them I did not need to get married to have a family because they were my family and they would never grow old because when the older ones left, younger ones took their place.
"When the first allegations were made I knew my world had come to an end. I admitted them because my mother was sick and I did not want a big court case, which it would have been because the club was very well known at that time.
"If the children had gone in the witness box the tears would have run down their eyes. I would not have dragged the boys into court because I was like a father to them and I could not image a father dragging their child into court and accusing them of lying."
He said he had rubbed linament into boys' legs but there was nothing sexual about it and had shared a sleeping bag with boys in his converted ambulance to keep them warm on winter nights.
He said he had given boys sleeping tablets because he was worried they would be kept awake by the cold and he wanted them to sleep on in the morning so they did not disturb him.
At the time he was working night shifts with a newspaper delivery company and he went on to work for a printing company in Exeter after his release from jail.
