A jury took less than an hour today to clear a man of repeatedly sexually abusing a girl starting when she was nine years old.

Melvin Riggs faced eight charges of indecent assault and one of gross indecency with a child.

But after a three day trial at Swindon Crown Court the jury took just 57 minutes to return unanimous not guilty verdicts on all nine counts.

The woman, now aged 21, had told the jury how she was repeatedly molested by the family friend.

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

And she said she kept quiet about the abuse for almost a decade until she revealed what had taken place to her boyfriend.

Riggs, of The Croft, Urchfont, faced eight charges of indecent assault and one of gross indecency with a child, all of which he denied.

The series of sex attacks were said to have started between late 1996 or 1998 when the girl was nine or ten years old and continued until late 2000 when she was aged 12 years.

Robin Shellard, prosecuting, told the jury that Riggs, who was a builder, was living in Devizes when he carried out the abuse on the girl.

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 specimens representing a course of conduct over four years.

He said those charge related to Riggs touching the girl but the one count of gross indecency was not a specimen 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 abused that trust to carry out the sex attacks.

He told the court “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 told officers that the abuse had not taken place saying he had no idea why the girl would make up the allegations.