A TEN-YEAR-OLD girl handed her mum a letter telling how she had been repeatedly sexually abused by her teenage babysitter, a jury has been told.

The crying child came down after bedtime with the handwritten note telling what she alleged had happened, Swindon Crown Court heard.

She said Michael Lee started to molest her when she was about five-and-a-half years old, and he was 14, and continued for about four years.

The little girl, now aged 11, said the 20-year-old, who used to be her babysitter, had repeatedly abused her when her parents were out.

Lee has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of assault by penetration between July 2010 and July 2014.

In a video interview with the police the girl told how she wrote the letter after going to bed one night in March last year.

She said she had been taught about Childline at school and felt she had to tell, as she kept thinking about what had happened.

“I said I can’t have this keeping to myself any more. I have to tell my parents. So I wrote the letter because I didn’t know how to say it in words,” she said.

Her letter explained that "Michael my old babysitter" would sexually abuse her, touching her inappropriately.

She wrote: "Please don’t have a go at me and please don’t call the police because I don’t want all the pressure of telling. I am so sorry for not telling. Please don’t have a go at me. I am so sorry."

She said when he was looking after her and her brother that they used to play hide and seek, and Lee insisted on hiding with her while her brother would have to find them.

Lee also suggested she sit on his lap, she said, when he put his hand round to touch her as she was in her pyjamas.

She said she asked him to stop, but he ignored her, and did not reply when she asked what he was doing.

“I told him that it felt uncomfortable and he just took no notice,” she said.

And she said she told her brother that Michael was doing ‘something rude’ to her, but he thought they must have been play fighting or she was fibbing.

Under cross-examination from Alex Daymond, defending, she said she stood by what she told the police.

Mark Worsley, prosecuting, said that when Lee was questioned by the police he agreed he had babysat during the period she claimed.

But he said he hardly spent any time with the girl who would be in her room, leaving him free to watch TV alone.

Lee, of Helmsdale, pleaded not guilty to seven counts of assault by penetration.

Giving evidence Lee told the jury that the allegations were false and that he had only babysat for the girl eight or nine times over nine months.

However he accepted he pleaded guilty last summer to inciting a child to engage in sexual activity after trying to get an 11-year-old girl to send him an indecent image of herself.

On that occasion, when he was 18, he contacted the child online and, after discovering her age, asked for the picture saying he would send one back of his private parts.

Speaking from the witness box he said he was 'sickened' by what he had done.

In cross-examination Mark Worsley, prosecuting, put to him that the conviction showed he had a problem with young girls, which he agreed with.

But when he suggested the online offence took place after he had stopped babysitting, and so no longer had direct access to a child, he repeated that he had not abused her.

The case continues.