A BLACKBURN aid worker inflicted years of systematic sexual violence on four children at an Albanian orphan-age, a court was told.

Dino Christodoulou took a different orphan to bed every night to abuse them, the prosecution said. But giving evidence at ourt in Albania, Christodoulou - who has been supported by many friends in East Lancashire who believe he is innocent - described the allegations as a ‘made-up fantasy’.

Christodoulou, 45, is facing 20 years in prison if convicted of abusing four orphans, one aged just four, at the His Children Orphanage in the Albanian capital Tirana.

His trial started last September, but, due to the lengthy Albanian legal process, this was the first time his case was heard in open court.

Prosecutor Kole Hysenaj said children at the orphanage experienced the ‘horror of years of systematic sexual violence by Dino Christodoulou’.

A seven-year-old boy gave evidence via video link, flanked by a family member and psychologist.

He said that he had been abused by Christodoulou and co-accused Robin Arnold, 56, of Norfolk, when aged just four years old in 2005.

The boy broke down in tears several times during his evidence.

He told the court he cried ‘all the time’ during the alleged attacks.

The boy said: “During the night when we went to sleep Dino got naked and he did take us one by one to his bed.

“He was touching us in our intimate parts, despite that fact we were against that. He did continue touching with his hands and keeping us close to his body.

“Every single night Dino and Robin would take one of us to his bed. The touching would happen every day.”

Defence lawyers for Christodoulou told the court that the evidence given from this child was ‘made up, pure, childish fantasy’.

Christodoulou said: “We haven’t done such things. We just protected these children and we have not abused the. Such evidence is made up and it is fantasy from the children.”

Christodoulou is charged with ‘sexual or homosexual relations with minors’ on four children during 2003 and 2005 along with Arnold when they were working as caretakers at the centre in Tirana.

Another co-accused David Brown, 57, a charity worker from Edinburgh, is serving 20 years in prison in Albania after he was found guilty last year of sexually abusing children at the orphanage. Brown had founded the His Children Orphanage.

The case has been major news in Albania, dominating the headlines in newspapers and on television.

Some parts of the trial have even been broadcast on tv.

The first public hearing, chaired by Judge Shefkie Demiraj, lasted just 30 minutes. The trial is set to continue this week with a second child set to give evidence.

Christodoulou was taken into Albanian police custody last May. He had spent seven months fighting extradition, but British authorities decided there was a case to answer.

Christodoulou left for the orphanage in 2002, telling the Lancashire Telegraph he was ‘on a mission to help the needy in Eastern Europe’.

The social therapy nurse had quit his job at Queen’s Park Hospital in Blackburn and sold all his possessions to ‘help orphans and those living on the streets’.

He was well known across the area as a charity champion after helping a number of good causes in the 1990s.

And in 1996, he won a bravery award for disarming a gunman who shot a woman in the stomach.

Friends from East Lancashire churches launched a ‘Dino is innocent’ campaign’. Last October, the Lancashire Telegraph was given a letter Christodoulou had written from his cell in which he protested his innocence, but predicted he would find it difficult to prove it before an Albanian court.

It is not know how long the trial will take. There can sometimes be weeks or months in between hearings in Albanian court proceedings.

Judges, rather than a jury, will decide if he is innocent or guilty.