Guilty, art teacher who dropped his pencils to look up girls’ skirts
AN ART teacher who regularly dropped his pencil in class in order to look up girls’ skirts was yesterday found guilty of a string of sex attacks.
James Skelton Smith, 57, preyed on pupils and former pupils of a state school.
To leer at the legs of his victims, ‘creepy’ Smith would crawl under second and third-year girls’ desks.
He bombarded one pupil with gifts and attention throughout her sixth year, causing her to drop out of his class to avoid him.
On her last day at the 1,200-pupil school, while she was still 17, he followed her into the street and gave her a ‘quite sexual’ kiss.
When she returned to hand in work for her final exams, he kissed her again and groped her in an empty classroom.
Dundee Sheriff Court heard how Smith – a surrealist artist, whose work has sold at Christie’s – touched one 14-year-old pupil’s thigh.
He also left a 15-year-old pupil feeling ‘really violated’ after touching her upper thigh with the palm of his hand.
Smith is also said to have gone into a cupboard with another teenage pupil and put his hands on her bottom to push her up onto a stool to get painting items from a high shelf.
He also targeted pupils after they had left school. He invited one to his home to look at his paintings. He then subjected her to sexual assaults in his bedroom and in his daughter’s bedroom, leaving her so scared she decided to ‘play dead’.
After a three-day trial, Smith, of Dundee, was found guilty of indecent assault, sexual assault and breach of the peace over an
‘I felt really violated’
11-year period between 2008 and 2019. Sheriff John Rafferty deferred sentence until November 7 for reports and ordered Smith’s name be placed on the sex offenders’ register.
He told Smith: ‘I found the Crown witnesses to be credible and reliable, in the main exceedingly impressive witnesses, and in some instances courageous witnesses. The case against you is compelling.’
Smith showed no emotion at the verdict. The court heard he had been suspended from the school for nine months and would lose his job.
During the trial, three schoolgirls said that ‘creepy’ Smith would repeatedly drop his pencil and crawl under their tables on his hands and knees, staring at their legs.
One pupil, now 15, said she felt ‘really violated’ when he touched her upper thigh with his palm on two occasions last year.
She broke down in tears as she gave evidence.
Another 15-year-old said she was ‘really weirded out’ after seeing Smith drop his pencil several times in front of her desk and those of her classmates’ then crawling underneath to pick it up.
The former pupil Smith kissed on the day she left school said it had taken seven years for her to make an initial approach to police over his activities.
Now 28, she said she had felt ‘really ashamed’ and ‘tried to bury’ what Smith had done.
Another former pupil, now 33 and married, said she ‘played dead’ after Smith sexually assaulted her when, aged 22, she went back to his house with him after meeting him in Dundee.
He had offered to let her stay after she had missed her last bus. She said she had got into bed fully clothed, in Smith’s daughter’s bedroom, and Smith had got into bed beside her.
She said: ‘I didn’t say anything to him, I was extremely frightened, very, very intimidated, because he was acting in a way I never expected.
‘He said I should go to his bed. I did as I was told – I was scared. I curled myself up into a ball so I would be completely inaccessible, but it didn’t work. I was playing dead.’