A convicted rapist has now been found guilty of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in the local area.
Michael Higgins, now 57, was convicted at St Albans Crown Court on Thursday (March 3) having denied molesting the child when he was mending her bed in her home in the village.
Higgins, of Broad Street, Chesham, denied three charges carried out on July 12, 2020: two of sexual assault of a child and one of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, but was convicted on all three counts.
In the witness box at St Albans Crown Court, Higgins told his barrister Nathalie Carter that he was known as Mucky, which was an old work name he was given when he was a hod carrier.
He said there was nobody in the bedroom at the address, when he rested the mattress on his head to fix the bed. He said he “fiddled with the nuts and bolts”.
Higgins said he had been in the room for five or 10 minutes when the girl came in. “I did not take notice of her at first. Then I was aware she was under the bed.”
He denied touching her. His barrister said: “She said you said: ‘Show me your bits and I will show you mine.’ Did you say that?”
He replied: “No. All I spoke to her about was the nuts and bolts at end of the bed.”
Cross-examined by prosecutor, Laura Blackband, he said: “I don’t know where the allegations have come from. I don’t know why she made this up.”
Ms Blackband said that when the girl asked him to stop, he simply smirked.
In court, he replied: “That never happened.”
The prosecutor said: “Did you find it funny you were getting away with it?”
He replied: “I wasn’t do anything.” He denied his hand was hovering over his genitals when he was in the room with the girl.
Judge Caroline Wigin remanded him in custody for sentence on June 20. She ordered that a psychiatric report and a pre sentence report is prepared.
Higgins has already been ordered to register as a sex offender for life.
After they found him guilty, the jury was told Higgins was previously jailed for six and a half years in November 2011 for raping an 18-year-old girl in Warminster, Wilts.
The attack took place when the teenager was walking along Grovelands Way near to Were Close in the early hours of Saturday, July 18, 2009.
Higgins pleaded guilty at Swindon Crown Court to rape on October 13, 2011, and was sentenced on November 4 that year.
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