Father 'lied over drugs assault'

[bongme]

hi

The Times

May 16, 2002

By Lewis Smith

THE businessman ordered to pay compensation to an alleged drug dealer was yesterday branded a liar by police.

The £250 compensation order and a sentence of 100 hours community service were imposed by a judge at Southampton Crown Court after Roger Dorrington admitted assaulting James White, the drug addict he accused of introducing his sons, Nick, 20, and Joseph, 21, to heroin when they were teenagers.

Dorrington, 48, claimed he had lost his temper and hit out after returning to his home in the New Forest to find Mr White cutting up heroin in his bedroom with Nick.

Hampshire police said yesterday that Dorrington had never mentioned the drugs to the investigating officers and had spent months denying the attack, in which Mr White was punched in the face at least 15 times as he lay on the floor. A force spokeswoman said that had Dorrington told police in June last year on his arrest of his complaints about drugs, officers would have been able and willing to investigate.

Friends and former neighbours of Mr White, who has a conviction for possession, but none for supplying, dismissed suggestions that he was a dealer. Mr White has requested that the compensation go to an alcohol/drugs charity.

Bongme