A TEENAGED nursery worker who is accused of abusing toddlers has told a jury that there are innocent explanations for the way he touched them.

Jayden McCarthy denied making a three-year-old girl take part in a sex act with him in a toilet at the nursery in Torbay and said all he had done was to change her wet dress.

He said CCTV images which appeared to show sexual contact with the children aged two to four in fact showed him playing with the children or putting on sun cream.

He said he had touched the legs of the little boys and girls rather than their private parts.

McCarthy was a 16-year-old apprentice who had worked at the nursery for four months when he was arrested on July 29, 2019.

Police were called in after the three-year-old girl returned home and told her mother she had been abused by McCarthy in a toilet area which was hidden from the view of other staff.

CCTV images captured by the 11 cameras at the nursery were studied by police who identified 13 other incidents involving seven girls and two boys which allegedly showed him touching them inappropriately over the preceding three weeks.

McCarthy, now aged 18, from South Devon denies a total of three counts of rape and 13 of sexual assault in a trial at Exeter Crown Court.

He has already told the jury that the incidents did not happen and that he has no sexual interest in children.

Mr Jason Beal, prosecuting, spent the morning cross-examining McCarthy and taking him through the CCTV clips one by one.

He suggested to him that he had been in the toilet area with the three-year-old for far longer than was needed to change her dress and that he had taken her to an area out of sight of other staff to abuse her.

McCarthy replied: ‘No, no,’ and explained he was delayed because the girl took toys out of her bag and got her elbow stuck in the arm hole of her clean dress as he was putting it on.

In response to being shown the clips, McCarthy said he had touched the legs rather than the private parts of the children and denied deliberately putting his hand up the skirts of some of the girls.

He said one of them had sat on his hand and another let her ‘puffy’ skirt fall over his arm.

He agreed with Mr Beal that some of his actions on the footage ‘looked odd’ and he would have reported them to other members of staff if he had seen someone else do the same.

McCarthy also denied abusing an eight-year-old boy four years before his arrest and said he had no memory of doing anything that may be misconstrued as a sexual assault.

Judge David Evans has told the jury he will give them written directions about what elements of the offences the prosecution have to prove later today.

The prosecution and defence barristers will then deliver their closing speeches before he sums up the facts and sends the jury out to start their deliberations tomorrow.