A MOTHER has told a court how a man accused of abusing children turned up on her doorstep to invite her 10-year-old daughter to spend the night at his home.

At Bolton Crown Court the mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told a jury how she believed that Malcolm Hicks was the uncle of one of her daughter’s friends.

But she said she was wary last summer when her daughter asked to join her friends at a sleepover at 50-year-old Hicks’ home in Hengist Street, Tonge Fold, as she did not know him.

She refused, but then Hicks, a caretaker at Crompton Health Centre, Astley Bridge, turned up on her doorstep 20 minutes later wearing his NHS direct T-shirt.

“He told me he was (a girl’s) uncle and said he worked in the doctors’,” said the woman.

Hicks asked if her daughter could stay at his house and gave the mother his mobile phone number, but the mother still refused to let her go. However, she said she later permitted her daughter to spend one night there for a sleepover party after the mother of another girl told her that her husband was friendly with Hicks and helped him work on his car. She refused to let her daughter stay there again and said she guessed social workers who called at her home on September 21 wanted to speak to her daughter about Hicks.

Hicks denies seven counts of sexually assaulting children, attempted assault of a child, causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, three counts of sexual activity with a child and engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child.

The charges relate to children aged between 10 and 13 and Hicks is alleged to have carried out the offences after grooming them with trips to the seaside, cake baking sessions and horror movies at his home.

The case continues.