‘Papa Ken’ denies molesting children in wife’s care at trial

Day home operator’s testimony halted after she goes into medical distress

The man known to his wife’s young charges as “Papa Ken” denied Thursday ever molesting girls under her care.

Kenneth Jenkinson said the allegations levelled by three children who were looked after by his wife at their Midnapore home were untrue.

“Did you ever touch any of these girls sexually while they were in your wife’s day home?” defence lawyer James Wyman asked.

“Never,” Jenkinson said, emphatically.

Jenkinson, 71, faces six sex-related charges involving three girls whom his wife Patricia looked after in the unlicensed care facility.

Allegations against him surfaced when one of the girls told her parents he had fondled her breast area on Nov. 20, 2015.

The girl’s parents came to the home the following Monday to confront him, he told Wyman.

“I’ve never been accused of anything like that in my life,” the U.K. native said.

He said the parents told him “the child had accused me of molesting her, touching her,” Jenkinson said.

“I was devastated, to be honest. I denied it, of course, it made me feel ill.”

Wyman noted the girl testified she had been called to the basement of the home by Jenkinson and he reached down her shirt and fondled her chest area.

“That’s absolutely not true,” the accused said.

“Did you ever touch her in a sexual way?” Wyman asked. “Never,” Jenkinson replied. The girl’s parents pulled her out of the day home, as did the parents of a second girl.

But that girl later returned, until further allegations arose in May 2016.

At that time, both girls, who were six years old, alleged he had touched their vaginal area and digitally penetrated them.

Jenkinson said after the first accusation was made against him, he and his wife decided that he would have no contact whatsoever with the children in the home.

“How much did you interact with the girls in 2016?” the lawyer asked.

“Hardly at all,” Jenkinson said. “My daughter looked after them when my wife wasn’t there.”

Under cross-examination, Crown prosecutor Shane Parker went through the allegations of each girl, suggesting they were telling the truth.

“It never happened,” Jenkinson said at one point.

Parker noted two of the girls later asked: “‘Why would Papa Ken do that?’ How do you respond, Mr. Jenkinson?”

“I didn’t do that,” he replied. Jenkinson’s wife, who suffers from seizures, then took the witness stand, but her evidence was quickly halted and court adjourned when she appeared to be in medical distress.

The woman was later taken from the courthouse on a stretcher.