Man accused of bath kidnap is a convicted paedophile

A man accused of snatching a six-year-old girl from her bath and raping her is a convicted paedophile.

Over the past 10 days, a Newcastle Crown Court jury has heard how Peter Voisey, 37, allegedly kidnapped the child as she was playing in the bath, drove her away in a car and dumped her naked and shivering in a freezing back alley near her home after subjecting her to two serious sexual assaults.

Mr Voisey, from Blyth, Northumberland, denies the abduction, rape and sexual assault in North Tyneside last December.

Yesterday, in a prosecution disclosure to help jurors decide whether Mr Voisey has a propensity to commit such an attack, the court was told he molested a 12-year-old girl in the changing rooms of a leisure centre in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in 2001. Mr Voisey was convicted of indecent assault. The sentence was not disclosed. Robert Woodcock, for the prosecution, said Mr Voisey's actions had been caught on CCTV.

The court also heard Mr Voisey had said he wanted to snatch a child, and had committed break-ins with sexual elements. Keith French, 34, a friend of his, told the court Mr Voisey once confessed he wanted "to do something" to some children they had passed in the street in Newcastle two years ago.

Mr French said the children were aged about six and eight. When asked to repeat Mr Voisey's comments, Mr French alleged: "He wanted to take the children off the street if he had the chance and ... do something to them."

The court also heard from the defendant's friend and neighbour, Clive Rudd, who said Mr Voisey confessed to breaking into a home in Blyth and groping a sleeping woman. Mr Rudd said he told him he stole a mobile phone from her.

In a statement, the child at the centre of the present case said: "He turned into the bathroom and took me out of the bath. He took me into his car; it made a screech when he was driving away.

"He put his hand over my mouth. He just said, 'Be quiet or I will hurt you'. I was trying to scream. He just threw me into the car. I thought I would never see my mum again. He drove off with me and then he left me in the back lane. I had nothing on because I was in the bath and he took me out."

The trial continues.