A FEMALE vicar exposed herself to a girl and assaulted another while babysitting them as a teenager, a trial has heard.
Reverend Veronica Green, 58, is facing five counts of indecency with a child and one charge of indecent assault relating to alleged historical offences against two girls.
The girls, aged five and 11 at the time, were allegedly abused while Green was a teenager in North Staffordshire.
During her trial at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court, Green accepted that some incidents had taken place but she said there was nothing sexual about them, MailOnline reported.
She told the jury: "I never presumed what had happened was bad until I became an adult. The things that I admitted to were never done with any intention to hurt or harm the girls. They were things that happened very naturally when I look back to the process of my changing.
"Neither of the girls or myself thought much had gone wrong. That's how it felt like to me until my latter years. I never regarded what we did as anything too serious."
Green – who is the reverend for Marbury, Tushingham and Whitewell in Cheshire – was suspended in January last year after the allegations were reported to cops.
Green recalled that when she was babysitting the five-year-old girl as a 13-year-old she exposed her breasts and crotch to the child after taking a bath.
She said: "I remember sitting there on the bed, opening my robe in front of her and exposing this part of my body, the front part of my body."
When asked why, she said: "I don't know why I did what I did. What I did on that evening, I have no explanation for.
"As a 58-year-old woman, I can't get into the head of the 13-year-old girl I was then."
She also admitted she had asked one of the girls to press her nipples three different times – but Green claimed it wasn't done for sexual reasons.
She said: "I can look back now and say it was a sexual experience but not at that age."
Green, from Marbury, denies five counts of indecency with a child and one charge of indecent assault.
The trial continues.
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