Molseed accused was sex attacker

Ronald Castree denies murdering Lesley Molseed

A woman has told how she was sexually assaulted as a child by the man accused of murdering schoolgirl Lesley Molseed.

The woman, who cannot be named, gave evidence at the trial of 54-year-old Ronald Castree, of Shaw, Oldham, at Bradford Crown Court on Wednesday.

He denies killing 11-year-old Lesley, of Rochdale, whose body was found on moors in West Yorkshire in 1975.

The woman said she was abducted by a cabbie when she was nine and taken to a house where he performed a sexual act.

The jury have heard that Ronald Castree was convicted of sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl in 1976.

Lesley Molseed was found dead on moors on the West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester border in October 1975.

Lesley Molseed's body was found between Yorkshire and Manchester

Her body was discovered three days after she went missing from her home in Rochdale while she was running an errand for her mother.

In a police video played to the court, the woman, now 41, described how she had been playing tig with a friend when the driver of a red taxi grabbed her and pulled her into his car.

"He just grabbed me and shut the door of the car," she said. "I just said 'I want to go home now. Let me go'."

The woman told how the taxi driver, whom she described as having ginger hair and a bald patch, took her to an old, empty house.

Once inside, she said he performed a sex act in front of her.

She said she escaped from the house after she kicked the man in the leg and went home to tell her mother what had happened. Castree admitted abducting and sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl.

In mitigation, Rodney Jameson QC suggested she had been playing a game called Jump The Taxi - where children asked taxi drivers to take them to a false address and ran off without paying - at the time of the incident, but she said she could not remember.

The trial was adjourned until Thursday.