Lifeguard noticed behaviour pattern

A LIFEGUARD noticed a ‘‘pattern of behaviour’’ with a man accused of indecently assaulting six girls, all under the age of 12, in a Queenstown swimming pool on June 2017.

The man, who has interim name suppression, denies 13 charges, dated June 8, 10 and 14, 2017 at Alpine Aqualand.

Claire O’Connell was working as a lifeguard on June 14 and was aware an allegation had been made against the man that night, and that police were involved.

Before police arrived, her manager asked her not to approach him and ‘‘if anything happened’’ to report it.

Ms O’Connell told the jury in the Invercargill District Court yesterday that the man was in the lazy river holding a float board with both hands.

When on the inside of the lazy river going around a corner by himself, or near adults with children, he would free his right hand and make circles in the water.

‘‘Then I noticed that if there was a child by themselves he would swap hands, so he would just use his left hand, which is on the outside . . . he would [make] big circles with his left hand [under water].’’

She said he would be ‘‘quite close’’ to children and allegedly saw him touch a girl’s buttocks; saw the child react; and overheard her say ‘‘he touched my bum’’ to her friend.

Ms O’Connell did not report that because the child ‘‘did not say it to me’’ and police were there within minutes.

The jury has also heard from two other complainants about being allegedly touched in the lazy river.

A 5yearold detailed how the man ‘‘tickled’’ her from her vagina to her stomach, down and back up again, outside her bathing suit, on June 10.

The jury heard as she approached the man from behind he reached behind himself ‘‘and he found something and he started tickling it, and it was me’’.

He stopped when she stopped moving and he could no longer reach her.

When asked, she told defence counsel Hugo Young she did not think it was accidental.

Mr Young asked why she thought that and she responded: ‘‘Because I think . . . he saw me out the corner of his eye’’.

A then7yearold alleged the man had touched her three or four times around the belly button while she was playing in the lazy river on June 14.

She said she was ‘‘running’’ with the current and whenever she came near the man ‘‘he put his hand out to touch me’’.

In her DVD interview she said the man was doing it ‘‘very sneakily’’ .

‘‘It looked like he wasn’t doing anything . . . he wasn’t looking at me at all.

‘‘Every single time he just tried to do it, tried to get at it.

‘‘I thought it was a little funny the first time it happened, but the second time I got a little bit angry and the third time I didn’t want it to happen again . . . Even when I was trying to get away from him he . . . tried to do it.’’

When Mr Young said he thought what the child had described was ‘‘an accident’’, she replied: ‘‘It wasn’t an accident’’.

The trial continues.