A schoolgirl tried to kill herself after she was targeted by a sex attacker with a history of paedophile allegations against him.

The 12-year-old’s frantic friends had to call the police to help drag her from a river after she told them: “I can’t take any more,” a court heard.

Now the former Bracknell man who subjected the girl to a catalogue of sexual abuse is facing a long prison sentence.

Ex-children’s nursery worker James Tough, 29, formerly of Aysgarth, Bracknell, was remanded in custody until November 6 by a judge at Guildford Crown Court, Surrey, on Wednesday afternoon.

Tough was found guilty by a jury after a trial of assault by penetration, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, two offences of sexual assault and one of taking an indecent photograph of a child.

Adjourning the case for pre-sentence reports, Judge Peter Moss said he would need a special assessment of the future risk posed by the defendant.

He said: “I shall need a report on dangerousness, given the background to this case.”

Tough was cleared by the jury of one charge of rape and another charge of sexual assault.

The defendant, living at Landrake Crescent in Whitley Wood at the time of his trial, denied all the offences.

Jurors heard that he was no stranger to allegations of child sex abuse.

Simon Shannon, prosecuting, said Tough had once been accused of touching a young girl sexually at a children’s nursery where he once worked.

“But the prosecution decided to offer no evidence,” he said.

Mr Shannon said on a separate occasion it was alleged that the defendant had French-kissed a young girl but had been acquitted of wrong-doing by a court.

It was during 2013 that Tough befriended a 12-year-old girl’s mother and would travel from his home in Bracknell to her house in Egham, Surrey, where he would come into the youngster’s bedroom and subject her to various acts of sexual abuse.

The victim, now aged 14, said in evidence to the court: “He was living with his mum and dad in Bracknell at the time.”

She said her ordeal at Tough’s hands would leaving her crying all day long.

“It was horrible, basically. He made me feel worthless,” added the victim.

She said she had tried to drown herself in the River Thames at Staines in front of her schoolfriends who called the police to help them get her out of the water.

The victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said her classmates begged her to report the abuse.

But she said her mother took her abuser’s side.

During the trial, the mother of the victim appeared as a defence witness and described her daughter as a “liar and a troublemaker.”

Tough himself accused the girl of using her knowledge of the past allegations against him to make up the abuse story.

“She’s lying about all this,” he said.

Judge Moss said that cases of this nature ran the risk of “dividing and destroying families.”

The court was told that after the river incident, police interviewed the 12-year-old girl and arrested Tough.

Detectives found semen stains containing the defendant’s DNA in the youngster’s bedroom.

But Judge Moss said that the most damning piece of evidence was the discovery of an indecent image of the victim stored on Tough’s mobile phone.

“Once that was established, everything else fell into place,” he told the jury after they had returned their verdicts.

Refusing to continue the defendant’s bail pending sentence, Judge Moss said: “You face an inevitable custodial sentence.”

Words by Tony Lithgow