A PAEDOPHILE doctor built a makeshift studio where he directed films of himself abusing children, a court was told.

Paedophile Robert Wells, 69, who has a string of child abuse convictions, turned a scrapyard portacabin into a film set, Hove Crown Court was told.

The windowless cabin was set up with lights and a large camera, the jury heard.

Wells, who is already serving a lengthy prison term, used the cabin to abuse a boy in October 1998, it is alleged.

Prosecutors said an eight-year-old was drugged and driven to an industrial area he remembers as being like a scrapyard.

Yesterday the court was told more detail about what he said to police. He told officers he walked up metal stairs to the cabin where Wells and another man had set up their studio.

The boy was visiting Brighton from his home in Scotland.

He told police Wells said he would make him a star after leading him into the makeshift studio.

The boy said: “He said come on you can do it, you’re going to be like an actor, you’re going to be a star.

“He kept saying don’t look at the camera.

“It was a dark room.

“I don’t think there were any windows.

“It had quite a low ceiling.”

He said Wells, another man and a girl he had never seen before were in the room.

“There was the bed with the girl on it,” he added.

“It was like a hospital-style bed.

“There was a white sheet on it.

“I remember the light was very bright.

“I remember saying hello to the girl and she didn’t respond.

“I remember Wells saying she was sleeping but I remember her blinking.

“Wells and the other man talked, then the other man went and stood in the corner with the camera.

“There was nothing in the room at all apart from the girl on the bed and the man with the camera.

“I think she was younger than me.

“I just remember standing there and Wells giving me instructions.

“I remember the other man because of what he said, ‘I don’t like this kid because he’s asking too many questions’.

“Wells said something like, ‘don’t worry it’ll be fine, like it always is’.”

Wells, who had a private practice in Brighton, gave the boy a white pill before driving him to the cabin, the court heard.

He described his feelings as he told police what he could remember.

“There’s parts of me that want to know what happened to me,” he said.

“There’s part of me that wishes he had given me two pills and I wouldn’t remember any of it,” he said.

“There’s part of me that wishes he’d given me three pills and I would be dead.

“I’m quite a sociable person, as much as I can be.

“I’ve never trusted anyone in my life.”

The boy said he went along with the family friend who he thought was a policeman.

“I asked him if it was police work because I knew he was a police doctor,” the boy said.

“I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what it was but I thought it would be alright because he was a policeman.”

The jury at Lewes Crown Court in Hove heard Wells has a string of convictions for sexual offences against children.

Wells qualified as a doctor in the 1970s and worked as a GP in Caerleon, South Wales, for ten years.

The jury was told while Wells was a GP in Wales he indecently assaulted three of his patients.

He assaulted another teenage girl in November 1998, telling them all he was giving them a medical examination.

Wells moved to Brighton in 2000.

In February 2003, he was arrested after filming himself sexually abusing two young girls after drugging them at his flat in Southampton.

He was jailed for 15 years at Winchester Crown Court in 2004.

After being released in 2015, he was arrested again when he failed to keep to the conditions of his licence.

He was jailed again for another seven years following another trial in Cardiff.

A cold case review of his case led to the discovery of new abuse videos on his computers and he has been convicted of multiple offences of indecent assault, rape and filming of a girl and her sisters who he befriended in Brighton The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, went to police in January 2016.  The court heard Wells refused to meet Sussex Police detectives who tried to interview him in prison after fresh allegations were made.

In February last year he was charged by post after again refusing to meet with detectives.

Wells denies two counts of indecency with a child and attempting to take an indecent image of a child with another unknown male.

The trial in Hove continues.