A JUDGE has warned a Worcester man found guilty of 11 sex attacks on young girls that he is at risk of being given a life sentence.

Neville Parker, aged 62, of Lear Close, was convicted by a jury of three rapes – one on a five-year-old – and six counts of indecent assault on four girls aged between five and 11.

He was also found guilty of two other sexual assaults and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

His common-law wife Gemma Robertson, of the same address, was found guilty of cruelty to a child.

Marcus Lewis, 42, of St Clement's Court, Worcester, was cleared of one rape and one sexual assault and discharged.

The verdicts by a jury of nine men and three women came after they had retired for nearly six hours at the end of a month-long trial at Worcester Crown Court.

Parker and Robertson kissed in the dock before they were remanded in custody by Judge Robert Juckes QC.

They will be sentenced in the week beginning April 22 after reports on their backgrounds continued on page 2 are completed by the probation service.

The judge said he needed to consider whether Parker posed a danger to children in the future and warned there was "a possibility of a life sentence" being handed out.

He told the jury it had not been an easy case because of the kind of sexual abuse they had had to listen to. He excused them from further jury service for 15 years.

Robertson was cleared of two counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child, rape and sexual assault.

Six of the counts against Parker date back to the early 1970s when he was in his twenties and living in Herefordshire, said Nicolas (correct) Cartwright, prosecuting.

Another complaint was made against him in the late 1990s, but was not proceeded with at the time.

The case was resurrected in 2007 following a blaze at the home shared by Parker and Robertson.

All three defendants denied the offences and insisted the attacks were invented.