A FORMER carer at a children’s home who is accused of sexually abusing three boys and a girl in the 1970s told a jury he had done nothing wrong.

Stuart Thornton, 65, from Cowling, who suffers from diabetes and was registered as blind more than 20 years ago, has pleaded not guilty to 13 allegations of sexual abuse of youngsters at the now-closed home in Carleton Road, Skipton.

Yesterday at Bradford Crown Court, Judge Neil Davey QC directed the jury of ten women and two men to find Thornton not guilty of two charges of gross indecency with a child.

The judge said that, having reviewed the evidence, the prosecution could not prove that the girl was aged under 14 at the time of those alleged offences.

The defendant is still accused of two charges of gross indecency with a child; two of indecent assault; six of indecent assault on a male person under 14; and one of buggery.

Questioned by his barrister, Chloe Fairley, Thornton rejected all the allegations made by the complainants.

Thornton denied going into the room of one boy at night and abusing him, or ever touching him in a sexual way.

He said children never went in his room. “There was no reason for them to be in my room.”

Asked whether he got into bed with any of the boys and if there was sexual touching, Thornton said: “Not at all. I am not that way inclined.”

He denied touching a boy when he was in the bath, or masturbating; and rebutted that he approached the girl from behind in the kitchen and rubbed himself against her, or touched her breasts.

The court has heard one complainant told police that Thornton threatened to withhold privileges or dish out punishment if he did not do as he wanted.

Thornton, of Spring Gardens, Cowling, threatened one boy with never seeing his parents again if he did not comply, prosecutor Christopher Dunn said.

Mr Dunn said Thornton worked at the home first as a volunteer and then as an employed carer, between 1971 and 1976. It is alleged that the complainants were aged between five and 13 when Thornton began abusing them.

One child suffered “systematic and regular” abuse in a dormitory at the home, the jury heard.

Now a man in his fifties, he told the police Thornton forced his head into a pillow to stop him crying. “He thought he was suffocating,” Mr Dunn said.

The trial continues.