A HOSPITAL worker has denied sexually assaulting a teenage patient.

Marcio Ricardo, of Cowley Road, Oxford, denies one count of sexual assault on the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in the city.

A jury of four women and eight men were told by prosecutors, as the trial began at Oxford Crown Court yesterday, that the 30-year old domestic worker carried out the attack on June 23 last year.

The court heard that when he first visited the teenager’s ward to change her water and collect her leftover breakfast the morning before the alleged incident he had made a lewd comment to her.

Taking to the witness box, the alleged victim said: “He asked me if I exercised at all and I said 'no, why?' and he told me that I had a nice body.

“I didn’t really say anything back to him, I just didn’t really know what to say to that.”

She added that the following day he again returned to where she was convalescing to change water and collect her breakfast, and it was then that he carried out the assault.

She told jurors: “He asked me if I was leaving because I had to go home at the weekend and I told him 'yes', and he asked me if I was coming back to the same ward room but I told him I was unsure.

“He then came towards me and there was a chair blocking me and he moved that away and he came to me and hugged me and rubbed his hand on my back.

“And he kissed the side of my head on the left side.”

She told the court that the alleged assault made her feel ‘extremely uncomfortable’ and added: “I felt really nervous and I didn’t know what to do because I had never been in that situation to know what to do.”

Ricardo, who was arrested soon after, denies the assault ever took place.

The trial continues.