A MAN allegedly sexually assaulted one women and followed another as they were out walking alone in a North Yorkshire village, York Crown Court heard.

Opening the prosecution, Dan Cordey claimed Thomas Joshua Bird, 30, pushed the first woman over from behind and attacked her three times.

Minutes before Bird had followed a different woman with the intention of sexually assaulting her but had desisted when she had stopped to talk to an acquaintance, the barrister alleged.

In her statement, which was read to the jury, the sexual assault victim said she tried to push a masked silent attacker off her.

"I was screaming to try and get someone's attention," she said. "I genuinely thought he was going to rape me."

Bird, of Fairfield, Knottingley, denies three charges of sexually attacking the first woman in June and one of deliberately not giving police his mobile phone's passcode.

The jury heard Bird accepts that the first woman was sexually assaulted.

But he denies that he was the attacker and that he followed the other woman along a road leading to an isolated area a kilometre from the sex attack location.

Mr Cordey said the jury will see CCTV of a black car the prosecution alleges is Bird's driving around the village.

He claimed it was close to the places where each woman within minutes of each.

He alleged police needed to access Bird's phone's to confirm Bird's whereabouts at the time of the sexual assault. Bird claims he had forgotten its passcode by the time police asked for it in September.

The trial continues.