Perth pensioner 'abused girls for 24 years'
Date October 3, 2012 - 10:15AM
An Australian pensioner subjected four young girls to an "entrenched pattern of sustained sexual abuse" which began more than 60 years ago, a London court has heard.
Reginald Davies, 78, denies 16 offences against the children, including several counts of raping a child under 12, over a 24-year period.
With the earliest allegation dating back more than 62 years to 1949, it is thought to be one of the oldest historic criminal cases in UK legal history.
The elderly Welshman, who was extradited from Australia last September, abused girls as young as eight in Abertridwr, near Caerphilly in South Wales, a jury at Kingston Crown Court heard.
After lavishing the girls with attention and "testing the water" by asking them for a kiss, he would touch their legs, the court heard.
These advances are said to have developed into intimate contact as the defendant began to force the girls to perform sex acts.
One of the claimants was just nine when Davies began to rape her, prosecutors say. He warned her not to talk about it as it was "their secret", the court heard.
The majority of the charges relate to the 1950s but the attacks are alleged to have carried on until 1973.
Hanna Llewellyn-Waters, prosecuting, said: "It is the prosecution's case that the defendant nurtured a fear of disclosing the abuse in the complainants when they were children.
"He made them feel that they would not be believed, that they were to blame and, on occasion, he threatened that they would be removed from their parents if they were to report his abuse of them.
"As the complainants grew up, they tried to block the abuse from their minds in order to try to be able to continue with their lives."
Davies faces four charges of child rape, three charges of attempted rape, eight counts of indecent assault, and one count of indecency with a child.
The former serviceman and mine worker was arrested last July at his home in the Perth suburb of Wanneroo, having lived in Australia for more than 20 years.
Wearing a black suit and shirt with a striped black and burgundy tie, he stood in the dock today with the aid of a walking stick to hear the charges, and listened to proceedings through a hearing loop.
PA
