AN 87-year-old man wept after a jury cleared him of committing historical sex offences against two young girls.

Edward Card, of Market Street, Abergavenny, was acquitted after a trial at Newport Crown Court where he had faced 15 counts.

He said to the jury, “God bless you,” after they found him not guilty of 10 counts of indecent assault and three charges of indecency with a child against the two complainants.

The trial judge, Tom Crowther QC, had earlier directed them to find Mr Card not guilty of one charge of indecent assault and one charge of indecency with a child.

It took the jury of four men and eight women just over an hour to clear his name.

The defendant had denied all the allegations against him at his six-day trial.

In his closing speech to the jury, Nigel Fryer, defending, urged them to keep an open mind and said one should never to assume that anyone charged with a sex offence was guilty of the allegation.

He said that Mr Card had maintained throughout that he had never sexually abused the complainants.

Mr Fryer added that the defendant had told them: “This is not something I have done.”

During the trial, one of the complainants had claimed that the pensioner had been a millionaire but was unsure if he still was.

She had alleged that Mr Card had offered her money so that he could touch her.

Prosecutor Roger Griffiths in his opening statement to the jury said it is the crown’s case that the alleged offences had taken place during the 1980s.