A man has gone on trial accused of sexual offences against young children going back more than 30 years.

Maqsood Asif, who is now 58, of Queen Mary’s Avenue, Watford, is alleged to have committed the offences at locations in the town when he was aged between 19 and 33.

At St Albans Crown Court on Monday, Mr Asif pleaded not guilty to one charge of rape, seven counts of indecent assault, indecency with a male person and indecency with a child.

The court was told the charges involved three youngsters, a boy and two young girls who were aged between four and thirteen when the offences were said to have been happening.

Prosecutor Wayne Cleaver said the victims are now middle-aged adults who had kept silent for years about what had happened to them at the hands of the defendant.

Mr Cleaver said: “Each of these three are now adults but the experience of what happened to them remained with them over the years and recently they have come forward to the authorities.”

Outlining the prosecution’s case to the jury he said: “In the summer of 2018, events of the past began to unravel and these complainants to come forward and made complaints to the police.”

He said the first of the victims to tell her story to the police was a woman, now in her late 30s, who told officers how on many occasions when she was aged between 8 and 13, the defendant had intimately touched her.

She said he’d performed a sex act on her after taking her to his flat where he lived at the time in Marlborough Road in Watford.

She also told the officers how on one occasion she had been raped by Mr Asif.

Mr Cleaver said following the woman’s account to the police two other alleged victims of Mr Asif were interviewed by Hertfordshire Constabulary.

A man now in his early forties told the police the defendant had intimately fondled him when he was a young boy.

A woman, also in her 40s, came forward to tell the police she too had been a victim of Mr Asif.

She said as a youngster she had been subjected to indecent assaults by him and he had exposed himself to her and forced her to perform a sex act on him.

On one occasion after she had been sexually assaulted he told her: “Don’t tell your mum and dad because they are going to be really angry with you.”

Mr Cleaver told the court that over the years the young girl, like the other two victims, kept quiet about what happened.

Years later, when she eventually told the police what had happened to her, he said she told them: “I just put it in a little box inside me and kept the lid shut.”

The jury heard that when arrested, the defendant denied he had committed the offences on the children, and says what they are claiming didn’t happen.

Case proceeding.