A gay man denies sexually assaulting another younger man while he was asleep in a camper van on a remote moor overlooking Bradford.

Peter Macmillan-Collins, 52, admitted performing a sex act on the 23-year-old after spending the night together drinking with two other men in his camper van on Baildon Moor, a Bradford Crown Court jury heard yesterday.

However, after taking the stand at his trial, Macmillan-Collins said he just “went with the flow” because he believed the young man had consented to carry out the act.

He told police in interview: “I remember feeling an arm around me. I must admit, I felt comfortable about it.”

Macmillan-Collins told the court how, after the incident, he was woken up by the man attacking him before police were called. He said: “I had a gut feeling that he had regretted what had happened. He was shouting at me, things like ‘where am I? What is happening? what have you done?’ “I was absolutely dazed being woken up like that. It was hard to take in.”

After punching and kicking the defendant, the alleged victim left the camper van and picked up a road sign, intending to throw it through the window.

One of the other men then drove Macmillan-Collins away in the van before police arrived.

When the defendant was interviewed twice by police he maintained he was heterosexual and that the allegations were untrue.

Robin Frieze, for Macmillan-Collins, asked him why he had not told police the truth in the first and second interviews.

He said his family were “very homophobic” and had difficulties addressing his sexuality.

“I find it incredibly hard to talk about what I am,” he said.

“I felt my family would find out. It is horrible being ‘in the closet’ as they say.”

However, in a third police interview he admitted performing the sex act after traces of the alleged victim’s DNA were found on swabs taken from Macmillan-Collins.

There is only a one in a billion chance it was not from the young man, the court heard.

Macmillan-Collins told the jury: “I almost found a kind of release that it was found out that way. I had to tell somebody.”

When asked by Mr Frieze whether he did not tell the truth to police because he knew the man had not consented, he simply replied: “no”.

The trial continues.