AN ABINGDON man accused of raping a five-year old girl has been found guilty on all counts.

Raymond Lorenz, of Lyford Close, Drayton, Abingdon, had denied two counts of assault by penetration, two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.

As the 68-year old’s four-day trial at Oxford Crown Court came to an end yesterday, the jury took two hours and seven minutes to unanimously convict him of each count.

During the trial, prosecutor Michael Roques told the court that Lorenz had abused the girl, who cannot be named for legals reasons, on numerous occasions during the 2000s.

At the time of the abuse the girl was aged between five and nine years old.

Lorenz declined to take to the witness box to profess his innocence and jurors instead heard a police interview conducted at Abingdon police station on February 14 last year, after the alleged abuse had come to light.

He told officers he had never carried out the abuse and that he had been sexually impotent for a number of decades and was incapable of having an erection.

He added: “I don’t know where it has all come from, I can’t fathom this out.

"Whatever has happened I just don’t know where it has come from.”

A range of previous convictions for various offences dating back to the 1970s were also revealed to the court during the trial.

The ordeal only came to light, the court heard, after a safeguarding officer at the girl’s school reported matters to the police.

The girl had told her friends of the alleged abuse, having already told her mother about what had happened to her.

Lorenz will be sentenced at the same court on April 20.