A ‘respectable’ 62-year-old Oswaldtwistle man had a ‘nasty secret’ – he had sexually abused two girls, a jury heard.

Raymond Duxbury is said to have repeatedly committed sex acts on one of the alleged victims and to have groped the other in one incident, Burnley Crown Court was told.

Duxbury is said by the prosecution to have molested the first girl on ‘lots and lots of occasions’.

He was arrested after the first girl had counselling at school.

Up until that point, she had only confided in her cousin and her best friend, the court heard.

Duxbury, of Blackburn Road, Oswaldtwistle, who is married with a family, denies 11 charges of indecent assault.

Sara Dodd, prosecuting, told the court Duxbury had never been in trouble with the police before, but he was a man with a secret.

The alleged offences took place in the Accrington area and the first girl kept what had allegedly happened to herself.

Miss Dodd said the only person the second girl was to tell about what she would say had happened in the intervening years afterwards was her then boyfriend.

He would say although she was a bubbly girl and full of fun, she became quite shy when it came to kissing and had been upset when she told him.

The prosecutor said when the defendant was arrested and interviewed, he flatly denied the allegations against him.

Miss Dodd said the first alleged victim would say she had been subjected to many incidents of abuse while the second would say it was one incident.

That disclosure made it less likely that the girls had got their heads together to come up with what would be very wicked lies.

She told the jury: “They have absolutely no reason to tell lies like this, or indeed at all, about the defendant.”

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