A children's home worker plied a boy with wine and tried to have sex with him as part of a seven year campaign of sexual abuse, a court heard today.

Almost 50 years after the attacks allegedly began in 1968, Philip Collins today went on on trial at Croydon Crown Court charged with 18 counts of indecent assault and one attempt to commit buggery.

Mr Collins, now 69, worked at a boys home in Kenley called Malvern House, where most of the alleged offences are said to have taken place.

All the charges relate to one boy, who said he was seven when Mr Collins began working at the home and the abuse reportedly began.

Prosecutor Tim Forster told the jury of seven men and five women that the abuse started with Mr Collins bathing the boy and paying particular attention to his genitals.

The jury heard he would also creep into the boy's dormitory at night and start touching the victim's penis, with one hand over the boy's mouth so he could not scream.

When the victim was eight or nine Mr Collins is said to have stepped up the abuse, inserting a finger into the boy's anus while he was bathing him.

The alleged bath-time sexual abuse ended when the boy was nine as the children at the care home were then trusted to bathe themselves.

Giving evidence from behind a screen the alleged victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said the bedroom abuse continued and Mr Collins would spank him while cupping his penis and genitals.

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The abuse is said to have taken place at Malvern House in Kenley, since converted into flats

On one occasion the alleged victim said Mr Collins had taken him on a day out to Battersea Park funfair as a treat because he missed a home outing through illness.

He told jurors on the way back from the trip Mr Collins tried to rape him.

The witness said: "We stopped to eat on the way back [at a restaurant].

"I had a steak for the first time in my life and I had a glass of wine for the very first time.

"It made me really heady.

"He had to carry me back to the car because I could not walk.

"We got back to the car and he gave me a kiss on the lips.

"He undid my shorts, dropping them down with a bit of a fumble and my underpants followed.

"He was fumbling by my backside and I felt something by my anus and did not give it any thought as I thought it was a finger as he had done it before.

"Then I realised it wasn't.

"Then I remember a pain and I passed out."

The witness said neither he nor Mr Collins, of Worcester Road, Sutton, ever mentioned what happened that night again.

He told the jury that the sexual abuse just went back to the way it had been with the defendant touching him in his bedroom and whenever they were alone.

The court heard the witness took an overdose when he was 18, two years after he left the home.

He said he had not mentioned the abuse at the time because he did not think anyone would believe him and also because he felt Mr Collins was giving him attention he had never had before.

The court heard he had told some people over the years about what happened but it was not until the Jimmy Savile case become widely reported that he took proper action.

He told a friend when he was 19, and his wife in 1996 some of the details about what happened.

In 2006 he told some staff at The Priory and Green Parks House mental health units about what had happened after being admitted when he took a second overdose.

He said: "I could not get my head in order and I had to get rid of each and every single thing before I could start from scratch again.

"I got very frustrated and angry about it but they said we have to deal with this issue, not that issue so in the end I shut up again."

After the Savile case surfaced on the news in March 2013 the witness emailed the head of Sutton Council's children's services, as Sutton Council ran Malvern House.

He said he thought that would be closure until the council officer told him he would have to notify the police.

The witness said: "When life gets difficult I do the only thing I know how to do, I run and I hide because it's the only way I know how to cope with things but I cannot do that anymore. 

"So I gave my assurance I would not run and hide despite wanting to. I was contacted by a very nice policeman and over the next four weeks I spent one day a week with him writing my witness statement.

"Then I spent the following day with a counsellor. I carried on seeing the counsellor for 30 odd weeks and he gave me a strategy for coping and he helped me with remembering.

"This was difficult but to let go you have to remember."

The witness told jurors that since the alleged abuse, from when he was seven to 14, he has found life very difficult and has problems loving other people as he always thinks they want something from him.

The trial continues.