Disability pensioner Kenneth John Aitken, 61, of Princes Highway, pleaded guilty in the Warrnambool County Court  to five charges, including indecent assaults of a girl and boy and three counts of gross indecency.

Crown prosecutor Justin Lewis alleged that Aitken was aged between 20 and 28 at the time of the offending. The girl victim was aged between three and four years old and the boy between four and eight.

Aitken was alleged to have assaulted the girl while she was in a bath. He also kissed the boy on the lips, touched him inappropriately and twice ejaculated on him. 

Aitken warned the boy that if he told anyone he would be taken away from his family.

The court heard that Aitken had appeared in court during the 1990s for other sex offences committed after those to which he pleaded guilty yesterday.

The offences included charges of willful and obscene exposure, buggery and attempted buggery. He was not jailed for those crimes.

Defence counsel Michael Turner said Aitken clearly had a problem with his deviant sexual behaviour when he was younger. He said Aitken was mentally infantile and his thought processes childlike. 

Judge Mark Gamble said Aitken knew he should not have touched the children as he did or he would not have warned the boy he would be taken away from his family.

“He seems to have had some appreciation,” he said.

He adjourned sentencing until July 15 for pre-sentence requirements for residential care, including a psychiatric report, to be completed.