A HEADINGTON man has denied carrying out a campaign of sexual abuse against two girls.

Scott McKenna, of Grays Road, Oxford, is accused of two counts of indecent assault and two counts of indecency with a child on one alleged victim, and a further count of indecent assault on another alleged victim.

The 37-year old is alleged to have carried out the abuse on a number of occasions in the Headington area in the early 2000s, mainly targetting the first child, before sexually assaulting the second girl.

Neither alleged victim can be named for legal reasons.

Opening the trial at Oxford Crown Court yesterday, Charles Ward-Jackson told the jury of eight men and four women that McKenna had made his alleged victim believe she was ‘in love with him’.

He told the court: “This case is about the repeated sexual abuse of a girl who was about 12 to 14 years of age by an adult male in his 20s.

“The abuse taking the form of him touching her [sexually] and getting her to [perform sexual activity on] him.”

He said that in diary extracts handed to the police one alleged victim said that she ‘loved’ her alleged abuser.

The incidents are alleged to have taken place, the court heard, at a number of locations in the Headington area including at an area off Headington Road, near to Headington School.

Mr Ward-Jackson added that McKenna then indecently assaulted the second girl girl, who was the first alleged victim’s friend, at the time, and that the defendant had ‘played both off against each other’.

The charges first came to light, the court was told, after the first woman revealed the allegations to a family member at a birthday party.

Despite being urged to contact police, the jury was told, it was a number of years later that the woman reported the alleged abuse and McKenna was arrested.

McKenna denies all of the charges and maintains that the girls made up the allegations. The trial continues.