Man (80) on trial accused of 12 sex offences

A MAN sexually abused a schoolgirl by touching her and kissing her inappropriately over a three-year period, a court has heard.

Martin Puddifoot (80) is on trial at Sheffield Crown Court accused of nine counts of indecent assault and three counts of indecency with a child aged between ten and 13.

Some of the acts are said to have taken place in Rawmarsh and others in Leamington Spa.

All of the acts are said to have been committed between 1992 and 1995, when Puddifoot would have been in his fifties. 

He denies all the charges.

Mr Paul O’Shea, prosecuting, said: “(The alleged victim) says when they were alone, he would abuse her sexually.”

Mr O’Shea said Puddifott was accused of touching the girl in a sexually inappropriate way, kissing her and causing her hand to go over his groin area.

Puddifoot had tried to give the girl £20 so she would not tell anyone about what he had done, he said.

The girl told a family member and a teacher about the abuse she had been suffering after returning from a school trip to Germany but it was “swept under the carpet”, Mr O’Shea told the court.

“She told male partners many years later when they noticed her behaviour was peculiar,” he added.

“She would sit with women but not sit with men.”

Mr O’Shea said that the woman, who is now in her thirties and cannot be named for legal reasons, later told her partner what had happened after he confronted her over some scratch marks which had appeared on her hand.

She said they were marks she had caused herself because of the abuse she suffered as a child.

Mr O’Shea said that when  Puddifoot was interviewed by the police he accused the girl of being “in it for the money”.

Jurors were played a recording of a police interview with the woman, in which she related the alleged abuse.

She said the abuse stopped after she told social services about what happened.

The woman said she had tried to tell herself that it was an accident and Puddifoot had not meant to do it.

The trial continues.

 

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