A man is accused of molesting his schoolboy victim when showing him a model railway set in his West Oxfordshire attic.

Malcolm West’s alleged abuse of the eight or nine-year-old saw him perform sex acts on the child or get the boy to perform sex acts on him, jurors at Oxford Crown Court were told on Tuesday (October 17).

The now 64-year-old defendant, who denies 10 allegations of indecent assault and sexual assault allegedly committed around the turn of the millennium in the Chipping Norton area, is also said to have carried out the abuse in his ‘distinctive’ yellow car.

Opening the case against West, prosecutor Edward Lucas accused the defendant of molesting the child to ‘satisfy his own lust and ego’.

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It was said to have begun when the defendant invited the boy up to an attic room to show him a model railway.

“At some stage, members of the jury, he was to say to that eight- or nine-year-old child ‘I will give you money if you don’t tell anybody’,” the prosecutor said.

The defendant was arrested and denied there was any sexual contact between him and the alleged victim, Mr Lucas said.

The prosecutor pondered: “If that is right – just park this for the time being – why, why would he lie about it?

“Why would he make this allegation to his mother and his partner, [it] clearly having haunted him since he was a little boy?”

Ending his opening of the case against West, Mr Lucas said of how the Crown put its case: “It is abuse and the defendant should have known better.”

West, formerly of Stafford, denies indecent assault of a male person and sexual assault by touching. The trial continues.