A woman told a jury how she was repeatedly molested by a family friend, starting when she was nine.

She said 59-year-old Melvin Riggs abused her for four years and at one stage threatened he would “bury her” if she told anyone about what was going on.

The woman, now 21, kept quiet about the abuse for almost a decade. Then she revealed what had taken place to her boyfriend, Swindon Crown Court was told.

Riggs, of The Croft, Urchfont, faces eight charges of indecent assault and one of gross indecency with a child. The sex attacks are said to have started in late 1996 or 1997 when the girl was nine and continued until late 2000 when she was 12.

Robin Shellard, prosecuting, told the jury that Riggs, who was a builder, was living in Devizes at the time of the assaults. He said: “What the prosecution say is that there were numerous acts of sexual abuse by Mr Riggs on the girl over a number of years.”

Although there were only eight indecent assault charges he said they were samples representing conduct over four years.

He said those charges related to Riggs touching the girl but the one count of gross indecency was not a specimen charge and represented the one time he got her to touch him.

Mr Shellard said the father of two was a family friend of the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and he had abused that trust to carry out the attacks.

Mr Shellard said: “He said to her at one point: ‘Don’t tell anybody or I will bury you’.”

When Riggs was arrested in July last year, he had no idea why the woman would make up the allegations.

In cross examination Alex Daymond, for Riggs, put to the woman that the sex abuse did not take place, which the girl denied. She said she had thought at the time that what was happening to her was ‘what every little girl goes through’.

It was only later that she realised it was wrong.

On the second day of the trial yesterday, An assistant priest at St James church in Devizes told a jury she had known Riggs since the mid eighties and regarded him a “helpful, kind, very generous person who would do anything for anybody”.

Rev Jennifer Haynes said she got to know the defendant when they lived close to each other in Worton.

Riggs denies all nine counts and the trial continues.