A 57-year-old grandfather on trial accused of sexually abusing two children up to 40 years ago told the jury one of his alleged victims was telling “a big lie” to try to destroy him.

Abdul Razaq denies eight allegations of indecent assault and one of indecency with a child, between 1973 and 1993.

He is accused of sexually abusing a boy, when the youngster was aged six to eight, and a girl, when she was seven to nine years old. His alleged victims are now a man in his 40s and a woman in her late 20s.

The man has told the court Razaq, who was in his late teens at the time, bought him toys and sweets to groom him. He alleges he was molested in an attic, a derelict house and a back yard in Skipton .

He said the defendant called him “a special boy, a good boy” and told him: “This is our little secret.”

The man said the abuse stopped when his father caught Razaq in the act in the back yard of a house.

Razaq, of Greenfield Street, Skipton, said he came to the town in the early 1970s to work at a local factory. He said he worked shifts, earning £5 a week, and had no spare money to buy the boy anything.

He never sexually assaulted him. “This is a total lie. It is such a big lie,” he told the jury.

Razaq, who was arrested in August last year, said in his police statement that his male accuser had “singled him out to destroy him” because of an historic dispute between families.

He told the jury he never sexually abused the woman when playing hide and seek games when she was a girl.

“How can such a big person play with little children?” he said.

Razaq said the woman had lied to damage him.

He told the police there was a clash of traditional and western values behind the allegations.

The woman confided to her therapist that Razaq had abused her 20 years ago.

The trial continues.