A retired fireman was branded "stupid'' by his wife for taking two nine-year-old girls into a local cemetery.

But 55-year-old Malcolm Vickers stressed to a jury that his intentions were "honourable'' and he had not done anything wrong.

Vickers, of Brompton Avenue, Bradford, told the city's Crown Court that he offered to give the girls a lift home after they spoke to him while his Rover car was parked in a bus lay-by.

The prosecution has alleged that Vickers, who retired from the Bradford fire service last December, drove to Bowling cemetery on the pretext of having to relieve himself and then started showing the girls sex magazines.

Prosecutor Richard Newbury questioned Vickers about whether it was appropriate to drive two girls, whom he did not know, into the cemetery and wondered what their parents' reaction might have been.

When he asked what Vickers' wife thought about it, he replied: "She certainly said I was stupid. After I had been arrested she said I had been stupid for doing it.''

Vickers has admitted one offence of indecently assaulting a teenage girl, but has denied a further allegation of indecently assaulting a nine-year-old girl, three charges of indecency with a child and two offences of falsely imprisoning two other nine-year-old girls.

He told the jury he had never locked the two girls in his car while he went to relieve himself in the cemetery and denied giving the sex magazines to them.

He claimed the girls were laughing and giggling in the car and when he looked he saw they had the magazines, which he claimed must have slipped out from under the driver's seat.

Vickers said the girls had been lying when they alleged he talked to them about boyfriends and directed them to look at pictures in the magazines including oral sex.

The court heard that various people, including a councillor and fire service colleagues, had written references for Vickers in which he was described as being conscientious and a father-figure to other firemen.

Asked whether those people knew he used the services of prostitutes and teenage girls, Vickers replied: "No.''

The trial continues.

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