A MAN aged 75 has been cleared of sexually abusing a young girl in Bradford 30 years ago.

Father-of-four, Dinzey Hazel, was speedily acquitted by a jury of ten allegations of indecent assault and indecency with a child, dating from 1978 to 1986.

He was found not guilty of two further similar allegations on the direction of Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC.

Hazel, a retired foundry and scrap metal worker, of Church Street, Manningham, Bradford, was immediately discharged from the dock at Bradford Crown Court this afternoon after the verdicts.

He had told the jury he wept and said: "Are you crazy?" when first accused of molesting the child 30 years ago.

He was allowed to sit down in the witness box while giving his evidence because he has diabetes and high blood pressure.

The complainant, now in her early forties, accused Hazel of first molesting her when she was five and continuing until she was almost 12 years old.

She claimed he routinely touched her indecently and made her perform sex acts on him.

Hazel, who has no criminal convictions, told the court he came to the UK from St Kitts in 1959 and moved to Bradford from the West Midlands in 1961.

He had lived in the Manningham area since, doing a variety of manual jobs.

Hazel said that, in the mid 1980s, the girl's mother asked him if he had ever molested her.

"I wept. I said 'Are you crazy? Are you mad? I don't do things like that'," he told the jury.

When he was arrested by the police in 2013, he again denied any wrongdoing.