Colin Inglis, 49, is said to have subjected the 13-year-old boy to a series of assaults when he was a social worker at a children’s home in Hull.

The Labour politician is accused of performing sex acts on the boy — who was being assessed for foster care after the collapse of his parents’ marriage — at the home, on a camping weekend and at a sports centre.

Mr Inglis, who later became the leader of Hull City Council and chairman of the Humberside Police Authority, denies 14 charges of indecent assault in 1982 and 1983.

A jury at Leeds Crown Court was told that he was first arrested and questioned in 1997 during a police inquiry into alleged child abuse at the home during the early 1980s. No charges were brought but, the court was told, a new criminal investigation began in 2004.

It followed the disclosure by The Times that detailed complaints of abuse by Mr Inglis had been made by the former schoolboy, now a senior financial adviser married with a child.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court yesterday that after arriving at the home in 1982, aged 12, he had initially developed a good relationship with Mr Inglis, his “house parent”.

Mr Inglis then “started to become over-friendly”, he said, and began to appear in the bathroom when he was having baths or undressing.

He would sometimes sit on the lavatory seat and simply watch the boy, but on “numerous” occasions he also washed him, “starting with my back and then moving down”.

The man said that he had initially slept in a shared bedroom but was later moved to a private room, where he woke up one night to discover that his bedsheets had been rolled back and his pyjama bottoms taken off.

Mr Inglis was at the side of the bed, he said, and he subsequently realised that a sex act had been performed on him. It was to be the first of many occasions, the man said, when he woke up to find Mr Inglis in his room performing a sexual act. He was scared and ashamed, but told no one about the abuse because he was “frightened of what Mr Inglis would do to me”.

The jury listened as the man described an evening when he had absconded from the home. On his return, he said, he was ordered by Mr Inglis to strip in the bathroom.

He claimed that he was then made to bend over the bath before Mr Inglis sexually assaulted him, claiming to be searching for hidden cigarettes.

On one weekend, Mr Inglis is said to have taken the boy on a camping trip to North Wales where the pair showered naked together and a further indecent assault allegedly took place.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Graham Hyland, QC, said that Mr Inglis stayed in contact with the boy even after he had left the home to live with foster parents.

When he was 14, the court was told, Mr Inglis took him on a weekend trip to London. They stayed with friends of Mr Inglis and the boy was in bed when an argument broke out between the social worker and his friends over the sleeping arrangements.

Mr Inglis, said Mr Hyland, had been angered by his friends’ decision to place him and the boy in different bedrooms. The boy allegedly overheard Mr Inglis asking his friends whether they thought he wanted to bugger the child. He was said to be so scared that he ran away from the house during the night and caught a train back to Hull.

Mr Hyland said that Mr Inglis was also in the habit of buying gifts for the boy. “It was apparent that [the boy] was very much Mr Inglis’s favourite at the time,” he said.

“Unfortunately, on the part of Mr Inglis, that friendly relationship went beyond mere favouritism and that of a social worker to child in his care, for there came a time when Colin Inglis began subjecting him to acts of indecency.”

The trial continues.

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