A FORMER nursery worker yesterday denied threatening young children in his care - including a claim that he told a boy he would lock him in a lift until he was dead.

Christopher Lillie denied further suggestions that he threatened the children so they would not tell their parents he was sexually abusing them.

Mr Lillie was being cross examined for the third day by Gordon Bishop, for Newcastle City Council and the authors of a report called Abuse in Early Years.

Mr Lillie, 37, and his former colleague, Dawn Reed, 31, are taking High Court libel action against the council, the report authors and the Newcastle Chronicle and Journal Limited.

The defendants are claiming qualified privilege.

Four years after they were acquitted of indecently assaulting young children from Newcastle's Shieldfield Nursery, the 1998 report concluded they had sexually, physically and emotionally abused many young children.

Mr Bishop referred Mr Lillie to the statement of a mother who said her little daughter's behaviour deteriorated significantly about four or five weeks after she started at the nursery.

But Mr Lillie said that, at that time, the little girl was not one of the children in the red room where he and Ms Reed worked.

Mr Bishop then took the former nursery worker to the statement of the mother of a little boy who said her son began to have nightmares, once yelling out "stop it Chris, you are hurting me, go away". But when he woke up he said Chris was nice.

The hearing continues.