A jury heard a mother describe her panic when she realised her six-year-old daughter had been snatched from the bath.
The child was kidnapped, driven off in a car and subjected to two serious sexual assaults, then dumped naked in a freezing back lane on December 27 last year in North Tyneside.
Peter Ivor Voisey, also known as Smith, a 37-year-old from Blyth, Northumberland, denies abduction, rape and sexual assault on the little girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
The mother told Newcastle Crown Court how the little girl and her brother, a toddler, had shared a bath and that the girl had been left alone to play with her toys.
She told the jury her daughter loved bath time and enjoyed talking to all of her toys, who were her friends. She said: "Then I heard: 'What are you doing in here?' She said it, she was not scared or anything. I thought she was talking to her toys, which would have been usual.
"I didn't respond to that comment, I wish I had now, but I didn't. Then I heard the car. I shouted: 'Are you OK?'
"Her voice was not there any more. That was unusual because she doesn't shut up but there was no response. The telly was on so I turned it down because I might have missed her saying 'yeah'. I called her again, again there was silence."
She told the court how she frantically searched the downstairs two-bedroom flat, even believing she may have forgotten putting the girl in bed.
"Then there was panic, running about and I phoned the police."
The jury was told the mother had left the back door unlocked because she was clearing boxes from Christmas presents into the backyard.
