Former nursery worker guilty of molesting four-year-old girl while babysitting

A 45-year-old former nursery worker has been convicted of molesting a four-year-old Gloucester girl while babysitting her.

Gloucester Crown Court heard the child's mother was shocked when her daughter told her how Jamie White had abused her - and then horrified to learn that he had been cautioned by police in the past for similar offences.

The jury heard the four-year-old told her mother: "Jamie told me not to tell anyone, but I'm telling you because I am a good girl."

The Gloucester woman had trusted White and was unaware he had been on the Sex Offender Register for five years for indecent assault of a nine-year-old girl in 2003.

White had also been accused of a similar offence in 1995 when he was working for a children's nursery, the court was told.

In January 2003 he was given a police caution after admitting a charge of indecently assaulting a nine-year-old girl.

The case had not gone to trial because the girl's father had been reluctant to put her through the ordeal of giving evidence, the prosecutor said.

On the day he accepted the caution, he was jailed for 18 months for attempting to obtain financial advantage by deception by trying to get a job at a local children’s nursery.

The jury also heard about the suspicions that social services had while White was working for another nursery in Gloucester in 1995 and had allegedly molested a four-year-old girl.

However, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to take the case to court because the girl was so young and it would be an ordeal for her to give evidence in court.

White, now of Atlas Close, Speedwell, Bristol denied sexual assault of the four-year-old girl when he was babysitting her and a sibling in February 2020 in Gloucester.

The jury took just one hour and 20 minutes to reach their guilty verdict last week at Gloucester Crown Court.

White will be sentenced on April 5 and he was released on unconditional bail.

Following his conviction, White was placed on the sex offenders register and the length of his registration will be clarified when he is sentenced.