Perverted pensioner abused two-year-old
A pensioner is facing jail for sexually abusing a little girl while babysitting her over 20 years ago and telling her: ‘It’s our secret’.
Vernon Foale, 71, molested the youngster between 1989 and 1995 while he was living in Kingswood, Surrey, starting when she was just two.
The victim, who is now 29, only came forward to police last year after telling her fiancé about what had happened to her.
She’d had a lot of ‘difficulties while growing up’ as a result of the abuse, the Old Bailey heard.
Foale used to slide his hand down into her knickers when she was left alone with him and once assaulted her while singing her a nursery rhyme in his kitchen.
He also once touched her while she was playing on an old typewriter he kept in his bedroom.
The victim remembered the first attack being painful – but said she started to think of it as normal.
Foale denied abusing the girl, he said anytime he had touched her had been purely accidental while playing.
But he was convicted of four counts of sexual assault after a three-day trial at the Old Bailey.
Prosecutor Anthony Prosser said: ‘These are charges of indecent assault relating to a female child – you may have gathered that these charges relate to events that happened around 20 years ago.
‘The complainant is now a young woman who has come forward to report to the police that when she was a little girl she was repeatedly abused by an adult friend of the family.
‘He would place his hands down the front of her knickers to touch her vagina and tell her to keep it secret.’
He continued: ‘Mr Foale denies ever sexually abusing her in any way at all – he agrees he was a friend of the family and used to play with the complainant as a child.
‘But he says such play was entirely innocent and any physical contact was an accident.’
When she was interviewed, the alleged victim said: ‘When I look back at it I know it all happened and was terribly wrong, but I think in this moment I never thought he was scary.
‘He looked after me all the time and it was a secret, it was our secret and he told me not to tell anyone.’
The abuse came to an end when the victim’s family moved out of the area in December 1995 when she was eight.
Foale, of Drive Spur, Tadworth, Surrey, denied four counts of sexual assault between June 1989 and December 1995 but was convicted after trial at the Old Bailey.
He was granted bail ahead of sentence on 26 October.
