A MAN has been found guilty of abusing two small girls after a three-year-old became one of the youngest witnesses to give evidence in court.

Stephen Cox was convicted of three offences against the child and four against an older girl of six after a trial at Exeter Crown Court last week.

Neither child actually had to go to court to give evidence because they were both video interviewed by police after the older girl told her mother she had been abused.

They were also cross-examined on a video link in a procedure which was recorded months before the trial itself, by which time both children were older. The jury were played both sets of recordings, which served as the child’s evidence.

Recorder Mr Donald Tait told the jury they should assess the children’s evidence as they would if they had given it live in court. He explained that the procedures, known as special measures, were intended to make it less intimidating for young children to give evidence.

In their pre-recorded evidence, the two children said Cox had touched them and devised an ‘elephant game’ in which he encouraged them to touch him.

Cox, aged 44, of Hillsdon Road, Torquay, denied a total of three sexual assaults on a child under 13, one of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and three of sexual activity in the presence of a child. He was found guilty of all counts.

The judge adjourned the case and ordered a probation pre-sentence report. He told Cox that immediate imprisonment is inevitable but granted him bail.

He told him: 'It is quite clear that the jury have thought very carefully about this case. Their verdicts mean they did not believe you and decided to believe the children, who had expressed what they said despite their ages.

'It must have been distressing for them having to listen to the evidence of the girls, the younger being just three years old.'

Miss Mary McCarthy, prosecuting, said the abuse happened in the late 2010s in North Devon and came to light when the older girl, then aged six, told her mother what had happened.

Cox denied touching the children, getting them to touch him, or masturbating in front to them.

He said: 'No, I have never done that.'

Cox will be sentenced at a later date.