Da Vinci Code conductor 'molested boys after plying them with drink'

Robert King, 46, is accused of abusing his position as director of an orchestra and choir to attack young boys, including pupils at a top public school.

Prosecutor Sarah Whitehouse said he tickled or wrestled his victims as a pretext for indecently assaulting them.

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She said King, who has worked on music for hit films including The Da Vinci Code and Shrek 2, began abusing boys in 1982, soon after graduating from Cambridge.

He had just set up the King's Consort orchestra and choir and was teaching at the school which cannot be named for legal reasons.

Isleworth Crown Court heard how King became friends with the family of one boy and was sometimes invited to supper at their home.

When the boy's parents went away King invited the teenager to stay with him, it was alleged.

Miss Whitehouse said: 'The victim's recollection is rather hazy because he seemed to have had quite a lot of gin to drink.

"He remembers being chased around the house.

"He hid under the bed at one son to become point and was sick." She said King tried to touch the boy's genitals.

Miss Whitehouse said the boy later got back on speaking terms with King and paid a second visit to his home.

"He went to bed. He had a sexual dream, at least he thought it was a dream," she said.

But when he awoke he found King performing a sex act on him.

The jury also heard details of the allegations of four other victims, including another pupil at the private school, one who auditioned for King's choir and one who was referred to him by a music teacher.

Miss Whitehouse said they had all been "young people who were all passionate about music and they were people who Robert King was in a position to advance".

King had taken one boy to concerts abroad, she said, adding: 'It is quite glamorous, you might think, for a teenager, Miss Whitehouse said: "There are very similar features in each case.

"In many cases it was done under the guise of some other activity, a game or a mock wrestle or towelling a boy dry after a bath."

She said King had once abused his position of trust on a musical residential course by putting his hands down the trousers of a teenage boy after a 'play fight' in one of the dormitories.

The jury was told that the boy had arranged to go on a date that evening with a girl he had met on the course.

But King talked him out of it become a teacher and persuaded him to go to the bar instead.

The prosecutor said by the time the third youngster - a keen music scholar - fell into King's clutches, the conductor was "beginning to make a name for himself" in the world of classical music.

She said the teenager felt flattered by the attention of such a distinguished musician and by being invited to his home.

Once more, she claimed, "play fighting" was followed by an indecent assault.

Miss Whitehouse said one boy had been the subject of "lengthy sexual abuse" which began when he was 12 and continued on a regular basis over three years.

She said King would "run a bath for him, undress him, touch him and then towel him dry".

The fifth youngster featured on the indictment was described as a talented singer King had "singled out" for outings and invitations to his house.

Again baths or so-called "ticklings" would be followed by sexual touching, said Miss Whitehouse.

King, of Earl's Court, West London, denies 15 counts of indecent assault between July 1982 and September 1995.

The hearing continues.