A college caretaker from Darlington drugged children with chloroform and raped them while they were unconscious, a court was told yesterday.

Two alleged victims of John James Sanderson told police that it went on for years until they were adults. They said that it began when they were boys and Sanderson took them to the empty college at night where he gave them liquid-soaked rags and told them to sniff it.

They woke up naked from the waist down and alone, said Shaun Dodds, prosecuting.

When Sanderson left his job at the college in Darlington and became a warehouseman at an engineering company he still carried chloroform in a small bottle.

The sex assaults on one boy began when he was ten until he was 21 and married with a baby, Teesside Crown Court was told.

A third boy was given chloroform to sniff but he became violently sick and Sanderson drove him home.

The sex assaults while Sanderson was college caretaker from 1994 to 1996 led to one boy making several suicide attempts and self harm, said Mr Dodds.

Sanderson showed them pornographic videos and magazines and also gave them cash and presents, he alleged. The police received complaints in July last year after the young father told his wife. Married Sanderson was arrested but he denied everything saying that the pair had axes to grind where he was concerned.

Sanderson, 35, formerly of Darlington and now of Dunholme Road, Newcastle, pleads not guilty to four charges of rape, three of buggery, indecency with a child and indecent assault between February 1990 and May last year. The case continues.