OXFORDSHIRE police failed to act on accusations that a 62-year-old man sexually assaulted a group of children on two occasions, a court has heard.

Yesterday, prosecution barrister Oliver Saxby QC began his case in the trial of Terence Sturgeon-Clegg at Oxford Crown Court.

Sturgeon-Clegg, now of Irvine in Ayrshire, has been charged with 12 counts of indecent assault, two counts of indecency with a child, three counts of cruelty to a person under 16 years of age and one count of a serious sexual offence.

Mr Saxby told the jury that the allegations relate to seven people and date back to the 1970s. He also told them that police officers were alerted to the allegations in 1997 and again in 2003.

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He said: “It was in that year (2003) that the Oxfordshire police received an envelope containing a DVD entitled ‘local girls’.

The police couldn’t find out who had sent them, but they analysed the DVD and found that it included photos of child sexual abuse.

“The police officer who saw them remembers that they included clips of a small boy and small girl performing sexual acts on an adult male.”

He added that not enough of the adult male was visible to identify him, but the girl in the images was identified as the one who contacted police officers in 1997 and who eventually did so again in 2013.

“The picture that emerges is a consistent one of sexual abuse perpetrated by a man for whom there seem to be no boundaries, physically or sexually,” Mr Saxby added.

The trial continues.

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