TRIP HELP MOLESTED TWO TEENS
School let perv back after attack No1
A PERVERT suspended for inappropriately touching a schoolgirl went on to sexually assault another on a Duke of Edinburgh trip.
Scheme instructor Graham Stirling, 56 carried out the attack after being banned for just a few weeks.
Parents called for an inquiry into the incident, which one said showed an education authority’s child protection procedures were “seriously flawed”.
Stirling assaulted the first girl, then 15, during a DofE Bronze Award overnight expedition in June 2013.
The girl told her parents, and Stirling was hauled before the deputy head of the Stirling Council-run high school who had organised the trip.
The city’s sheriff court heard on Friday that the deputy head told Stirling, a parent-helper, he would no longer be allowed to go on Duke of Edinburgh trips.
But at the end of the term the deputy head retired, and Stirling, after missing just one expedition, was “invited back on the team” by the school’s DofE organiser, whom Stirling regarded as “a friend”.
In April last year, Stirling – described as “creepy” by pupils – struck again in what a sheriff called “strikingly similar circumstances”.
This time the school called in the police and, after a two-day trial, dad-of-three Stirling, of Denny, Stirlingshire, was found guilty of sexually assaulting both girls. Sentence was deferred until November 29 for reports.
The dad of one of the girls said: “If they had dealt with this properly when we raised what had happened to our daughter in 2013, it would not have happened again.”
Stirling Council said they deeply regreted the girls “were impacted” by Stirling’s “unacceptable actions”.