A former police officer engaged in “predatory and controlling” behaviour for many years, his trial on charges of sexually assaulting a girl and a woman has been told.

The child told her mother what David Carrick was doing after she was found sleeping behind her bedroom door when she was 14, the Old Bailey in London heard.

Carrick, 50, allegedly assaulted the teenager a number of times and would put his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming.

On one occasion, she found herself “trapped” between a chair and a sofa and recalled trying to scream and get away, the court was told.

Carrick has denied five counts of sexual assault relating to the child in 1989 and 1990.

He has also pleaded not guilty to two charges of rape, one of sexual assault and coercive and controlling behaviour toward a woman between 2014 and 2019.

Carrick allegedly made admissions about what he had done to the girl in a letter recovered from his medical records and signed “Dave”.

He wrote that the girl was “not crazy” and that it was “true” but he had stopped about four months previously.

“I know how (the girl) must feel. That’s why I stopped and promised I would never go near her again and I have kept that promise and I always will,” Carrick wrote.

He offered never to be seen again, adding: “Sorry to you and especially sorry to (the girl) but she does not have to worry ever again. Please do not try to talk about it.”

More than 20 years later, he allegedly raped and sexually assaulted a woman with whom he was in a “toxic relationship”.

Opening the trial on Tuesday, Tom Little KC, prosecuting, said: “This case that you are now trying is primarily about sexual offending committed many years apart by this defendant.

“But in respect of all the offending, whenever it was committed, the defendant was, we say, very predatory and controlling. This was not isolated offending but part of a pattern which the defendant perpetrated over many years.”

Little said that, in 2022 and 2023, Carrick pleaded guilty to a “large number” of sexual and other offences relating to a significant number of women, nearly all of whom he knew.

The first complainant in the trial was aged about 12 when she was sexually assaulted by the defendant, it was alleged.

The woman was raped “on a number of occasions” and subjected to a sex act to which she did not consent, Little said.

He told jurors: “Much of this offending occurred during the course of what was a toxic relationship between the two of them and which was controlled by him.”

Little added: “It is also relevant for you to know that he was at the time of that relationship, as he was for many years, a Metropolitan police officer.”

Neither of the alleged victims in the case can be identified for legal reasons. The trial continues.