A MAGISTRATE and teaching assistant used the privacy of a secluded judges' car park to sexually abuse a boy, a jury heard today.

Rodney Fox was a Justice of the Peace and had a special key fob which gave him the privilege to park in the exclusive car park at weekends.

He would take a boy aged between 11 and 12 years to the car park and eat McDonald's or KFC fast food after he had tutored him.

The jury of four men and eight women heard that after eating, the 49-year-old would kiss the boy.

Samantha Cohen, prosecuting at St Albans Crown Court, said that after numerous occasions where the boy was kissed, Fox pulled down his jogging bottoms and performed a sex act on him.

The boy later asked his mother whether she could pick him up from class  and when she said no, he stopped going to the classes.

Ms Cohen said Fox had ingratiated himself into the boy's family and his mother 'implicitly trusted Mr Fox' after he helped her son.

She told the jury today: "Over a number of years he ingratiated himself into the boy's family."

She said that after tutoring the boy the defendant would buy him lunch.

"Sometimes he would take him to the car park and sit in the back of his car where they would eat [...] lunch," she said.

"The car was parked underneath Reading Magistrates' Court that Mr Fox had access to because he was a part-time magistrate at that court.

"In his car Mr Fox kisses the boy on he lips. On one occasion he took the boy's penis our of his trousers.

"The boy was disgusted and did not know what to do."

She added that there was an element of "hero worship" on behalf of the boy.

"He groomed the boy," Ms Cohen said.

"When a boy gets to play computer games all morning and is bought a fast food lunch, it almost guarantees hero worship."

A year after the alleged abuse, the boy wrote a note to a teacher telling her what had happened with Mr Fox.

That teacher contacted social services and the police, who arrested Fox and searched his home on November 20, 2015.

The jury heard that Fox accepted in police interview that he gave lifts to the boy and would eat lunches in his car with him but denied any sexual contact. He added that he boy had kissed him and he had "blown a raspberry" on his tummy on one occasion.

He said there had also been some tickling.

A laptop computer found in a wardrobe in the bedroom at Fox's home in Caversham was forensically examined by police who found two pornographic images of teenage boys. Fox refused to say who the computer belonged to.

Ms Cohen went on: "In addition to the images being illegal it demonstrates a sexual interest in teenage boys.

"Could that be in reality a coincidence of a sexual interest in teenage boys and oral sex?"

She added that from 2010, when Fox started working with children, he had received almost yearly training on safeguarding youngsters.

However, he had been given a verbal warning at a primary school for being left alone with a student as well as a number of verbal pieces of advice about the "blurring of professional boundaries" with some children.

A member of staff also reported his behaviour towards the boy on a trip, which included sitting next to him on the coach and holding his hand during an evening walk.

Fox, now of Northumberland Avenue, Whitley, denies one count of sexual assault of a child under 13 years, one count of inviting sexually activity with a child under 13 years between 2013 and 2015 and making indecent images of children sometime before November 20, 2015.

The trial continues.