A MAN charged with raping a five-year old child told police at interview that he never carried out the abuse and had been sexually ‘impotent’ since the 1990s, a court heard.

Raymond Lorenz, of Lyford Close, Drayton, Abingdon, denies two counts of assault by penetration, two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.

The multiple offences are alleged to have taken place on numerous occasions in the 2000s on one girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, while she was aged under 10.

The 68-year old told police when he was interviewed last year that he had never carried out the sexual abuse, Oxford Crown Court heard as his trial continued yesterday.

Reading aloud the police interview, which was conducted on February 14, to the jury, the court heard him claim he could never have raped her due to his sexual inactivity.

He told police: “I can’t even get an erection, not since the early 1990s so [I have] no sex life at all.”

He also told officers: “I don’t know where it has all come from, I can’t fathom this out. Whatever has happened I just don’t know where it has come from.”

Prosecutors maintain that Lorenz carried out the abuse on the child on various occasions.

Earlier in the trial, which began on Monday, the court heard that police had only become aware of the alleged abuse when safeguarding officers at her school raised the alarm.

Mr Roques told jurors that the girl had told her mother first about the incidents more than a decade after the alleged ordeal, before telling her friends.

It was then that they become involved and Lorenz was questioned and later charged.

The trial continues.