A SOCIAL worker who denies having sex with two 15-year-old boys in care has claimed that one threatened her life and that of her fiance.

Lisa Smith claimed she began receiving phone calls and text messages from the same teenager after he tried to make a pass at her.

She told a jury that she returned phone calls and even met him a number of times to try and make him leave her alone.

Smith, 26, told Preston Crown Court she had stayed the night with the same youth - though not slept with him - at a Blackpool B & B in a bid to rationalise with him.

The now married woman of Victoria Street, Wheelton, denies 14 charges of indecent assault.

The judge has directed that the jury should return not guilty verdicts on two other charges of indecent assault, plus charges of perverting the course of justice and witness intimidation, at the end of the trial.

The prosecution alleges that she had sex, including in the changing rooms at Waves swimming pool, Blackburn, with the two boys after they were placed in Glendale Community Home, Leyland, where she was a residential social worker.

One lad has claimed that he and Smith had sex up to thirty times.

Giving evidence she said young people with problems went to the home. But staff found it harder and harder to cope when emergency admissions became very frequent, with more volatile youngsters being placed there.

She alleged there had been a "culture of complaints" at Glendale. Following a five-month long suspension in a disciplinary investigation last year, she was allowed back to work.

She completely denies having sexual contact with the boys. She described the first as being quite heavily addicted to drugs.

She claimed the second boy moved as if to make a pass at her, one night at the home. She pushed him away and said the boy spoke of having heard allegations regarding the other youth.

Smith, who married in June, said she began to receive phone calls from the same youth in October last year following her suspension. She made calls in return. "I was asking him to leave me alone, to let the situation just sort itself out."

The calls continued over the following months and Smith accepted having had some meetings with the boy in a bid to try and make him leave her alone.

"I was scared. I had no idea what his capabilities were. As time went on he threatened my life and my partner's life," she told the jury. "He threatened to kill him, threatened he would not walk again".

(Proceeding)