An Ayr pensioner has been found guilty of historic sexual abuse charges against three females, including a child who was just eight years old at the time of the attacks.

Robert McCurdie had denied six charges, including sexual assaults and lewd, indecent, libidinous behaviour and acts, alleged to have been committed from the late 1990s onwards.

McCurdie, now aged 68, was found guilty by a jury at Ayr Sheriff Court of assaulting a woman in 1999 and the early 2000s by repeatedly groping her above her clothing and by kissing her on the lips.

He was also convicted of committing lewd acts towards an eight-year-old girl in Ayr on August 1, 1998 by climbing into her bed while she slept, placing his hand inside her clothes and sexually assaulting her.

The jury also found McCurdie guilty of a third charge, of indecently assaulting a third female victim on January 1, 2010, again by putting his hand inside her clothing while she was asleep.

However, the jury acquitted him of further allegations that he had forced a girl aged seven or eight to watch him having sex with a woman in the mid-1980s, of assaulting the same girl, and of breaching a court-imposed bail condition by approaching one of his alleged victims last year.

Sentence was deferred for criminal justice social work reports and a risk assessment.

McCurdie was released on bail and will return to court to be sentenced at a later date.

He was put on the sex offenders register on an interim basis, with the time he will spend on the register to be decided at sentencing.