A POPULAR author of children’s stories faces prison after admitting a series of sex attacks on young girls.

William Mayne, 76, confessed to abusing six girls, many of them fans, after changing his plea on the third day of his trial. Five of his victims, who are now adults, were in court yesterday as the award-winning novelist was told by Judge David Bryant that he will almost certainly be jailed when he is sentenced next month.

Mayne’s guilty pleas came after a jury heard evidence from two women who described naked group “play” sessions at the writer’s home in the Yorkshire Dales village of Thornton Rust. One described how Mayne encouraged games in which four or five children would romp, wrestle and “climb all over” him.

Sometimes they even shared a bath and watched while one of their companions was being abused, but no one complained because they had all been persuaded that it was normal behaviour.

The jury was told that many of the children were fascinated by Mayne’s fantasy novels and first made contact with him after writing fan letters. Mayne wrote more than a hundred novels including the award-winning Low Tide in 1993.

One victim, now 51 and married with children, told Teesside Crown Court that she was abused by the author. She said: “It was so horrific, but it was part of the grooming to think this was normal. He was saying this was what we wanted.”

Mayne had denied two specimen charges of rape against one girl, aged between 8 and 13, and a further 13 indecent assaults against seven other girls, aged from 6 to 16, between 1960 and 1975.

Yesterday, however, he admitted 11 counts of indecent assault against six of the girls.

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