A FORMER postman abused young girls in his post van while going about his rounds, a jury heard yesterday.

Alfred Cooper, from Beechcroft in Dorchester, denies 15 counts of indecent assault and three of indecency with a child.

They relate to three alleged victims in the 1980s.

Yesterday the first witness at Oxford Crown Court broke down as she told the jury Cooper, now 83, had abused her.

The woman, who cannot be named, told jurors the abuse happened in Cooper’s van around Dorchester, Berinsfield and Stadhampton.

Peter Du Feu, defending, asked: “Are you simply mis-remembering a bit of horseplay and tickling?”

She replied: “No. It was not horseplay or tickling.”

The jury later heard from a second witness, who claimed Cooper kissed her on the lips when she was 10.

She said she knew him just as “Alf the postman”.

She said: “All I seem to remember is he was a very chatty and nice man.

“I seem to remember being in the back of his van, I could smell the bags.”

She added: “It’s not a smell I like to remember.”

The jury heard a police interview with the witness, in which she remembered being in the van alone with Cooper when he kissed her.

She said: “I don’t know if he was trying to hug me or touch my personal bits.

“I do remember him trying to kiss me and I was really scared because I was on my own.

“I just knew I wanted to get out of that, I wanted to go home.”

The trial continues.