A HOUSEMASTER at a now closed North Yorkshire residential school has denied that he sexually abused two of its pupils.

Anver Daud Sheikh told a jury at York Crown Court that he preferred women, not men or children.

"That is something that disgusts me, something that is not me," he said of the child abuse allegations.

Sheikh, 52, of Wilson Street, Leicester, denies two serious sex charges and two indecent assaults allegedly committed in the early 1980s.

Giving evidence in his own defence, Kenyan-born Sheikh said he had good memories of his couple of years at the school, which he described as "caring".

He said that he could not remember anything about the two boys and could not understand why they had given evidence that he had abused them.

But he thought they might have read something or responded to something that had happened in Leicester.

He told the jury that he was a British citizen who had served nine years in the British Army, including stints in Northern Ireland, before becoming a lorry driver and a youth worker in civilian life.

After leaving the school in the early 1980s he had had different jobs, including working for two probation services.

The court heard he had no previous convictions.

Earlier, the second boy had alleged that Sheikh had woken him from sleep with the offer of a cup of tea.

The boy said Sheikh had taken him into his bedroom where he abused him, causing him so much pain he could barely walk.

Afterwards, alleged the boy, Sheikh had threatened to kill him if he revealed what had happened. Then he offered and gave him some pizza.

The jury heard that both boys had criminal convictions before they went to the school and that the second boy had committed several offences afterwards. The first boy alleged he had had no contact with the second boy before or after attending the school.

The trial continues.

Updated: 11:27 Thursday, May 09, 2002