Ex-social worker ‘used position at children’s home to carry out sex attacks’

By The Press Association8th March 2016News EnglandChild Abuse, Childrens Services, East Midlands, News England, Nottinghamshire, Sexual Abuse

A former social worker used his position at a “brutal” children’s care home to carry out a string of sex attacks in the early 1980s, a court has heard.

Andris Logins is said to have carried out four rapes and 10 indecent assaults on two girls and a boy he was caring for at the Nottingham home.

The 57-year-old worked at the Beechwood Care Home in Mapperley between 1980 and 1985 and abused children “who he knew were extremely vulnerable and who had no one to turn to”, the prosecution said as his trial began at Nottingham Crown Court.

Logins, of Stiles Road, Arnold, Nottinghamshire, denies the charges and a further charge of child cruelty.

Opening the case, prosecutor Mary Prior said Logins would develop a caring rapport with his alleged victims before abusing them.

In one case, she said Logins abused a boy – then aged under 16 – around 10 times, with the defendant performing sex acts on the child and making the child perform sex acts on him.

The complainant told police he initially thought Logins was trying to protect him, but was actually trying to “get his horrible greasy hands on me”.

Logins told the complainant that no one would believe him if he reported the abuse, the court heard.

Mrs Prior said: “The defendant was clever.”

She told the court of another case where a 14-year-old girl had become upset at school and was sent back to Beechwood.

The court heard Logins told her to have a lie down and he then started to rub her shoulders and then took her hand and placed it on his penis.

On another occasion, Logins described the complainant as his “special woman” and raped her, the court heard.

Mrs Prior said the complainant last saw Logins in 1984, but she was able to identify him in a police identity parade.

She said: “Such was the impact of his offending on her that she had not forgotten his face.”

Logins is also said to have dragged a 14-year-old boy into his office, punched him until he “cowed on the floor”, then forced him to undress and made him stand with his hands on his head for five minutes.

The police became involved when another woman, who was 15 when she was allegedly raped by Logins, went to police in July 2013.

The court was told Logins said to officers the four people “had got the wrong man” and suggested the descriptions given by the complainants could have fitted other men who worked at the home.

The trial, which is expected to last four weeks, continues.