A MAN accused of snatching a young girl from her bath and raping her is a paedophile who molested another child five years ago, a jury was told yesterday.

Peter Voisey, 37, denies abducting, raping and sexually assaulting the six-year-old child in North Tyneside last December.

During nine days of evidence, the jury has been told how the girl was taken from the ground-floor flat where she lived and driven away.

A man subjected her to two serious sexual assaults before dumping her naked and shivering in a freezing back alley near her home.

The girl has told jurors how she was abducted while playing in the bath and taken on a 20-minute journey.

Yesterday Newcastle Crown Court was told that Mr Voisey confessed previously to molesting a 12-year-old girl in the female changing room of a leisure centre in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in July 2001.

The elder girl had been swimming when Mr Voisey allegedly began lurking around the centre’s locker area.

When arrested, he denied that he was the attacker and gave conflicting accounts before admitting indecent assault after closed-circuit television recordings were played.

Mr Voisey, also known as Smith, from Blyth, Northumberland, was convicted in September that year, the jurors were told. They heard that the 2001 conviction had been brought up to help them to decide whether Mr Voisey had a propensity to carry out such an attack.

Mr Voisey hung his head and stared at the floor as Mr Robert Woodcock, for the prosecution, described the earlier conviction. The trial continues.

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