Teacher claims he was ‘groomed’ by teenager

An ex-Army Colour Sergeant told a jury he had been “groomed” by a 17-year-old girl he is accused of sexually assaulting at a Perthshire school.

James Clark, 56, admitted he had sexual contact with the girl, then 17, but insisted it had been consensual.

Clark – a former chief instructor for pipes and drums for the British Army – said he had previously taught at top Scottish schools before moving to the Perthshire school, which cannot be identified.

He is accused of sexually assaulting the girl and eight other female pupils.

It is alleged the sexual assaults towards the other girls were hugs or striking on the buttocks with his hands or drumsticks.

He said while he may have “cuddled” girls to comfort or congratulate them, or hit their bottoms with drumsticks or his hands “to get their attention, or when shooing them in and out of a room like sheep” there was no sexual intention behind these actions.

He said he was “a mentor for the kids” at the school, as well as teaching them drumming from the age of 11. They knew him as “Drummie”.

Giving evidence on the fifth day of his trial, he said: “There was absolutely no sinister or sexual motive from me to these kids. “That’s ridiculous.” However, in the case of the 17-year-old, he said “sexual tension” had led to sexual contact.

Clark, now a gardener, said he was “going to have to live with having done it for the rest of (his) life, and, chances are, go to prison”.

He claimed nothing between him and the 17-year-old was non-consensual.

Prosecutor Cheryl Clark asked the accused: “You were suggesting you were being groomed by (the girl)?”

He replied: “I think I was in a way.”

He had told his counsel, the advocate Sarah Livingstone: “She was very willing.

“She’d say I was cute, smelled good, looked good.”

Miss Livingstone asked if he could sum up the girl’s attitude to him.

He replied: “I don’t know if groom is the word – flirty, maybe.”

He claimed there was “sexual tension” between him and the teenager, culminating in “proper adult kissing” in his office”.

The girl, now 20, said Clark had “abused” her in his car, “in the duty office, in the drying room, the junior common room, the senior common room and at one point, in the children’s tuck cupboard”.

She said he had “kissed her open mouthed”, kissed her neck and left a “hickey” and touched her intimately.

She said while giving her a lift in his car, he had put his hand on her thigh, pulled over and started kissing her.

During one car journey, she claimed, he had undone her jeans while driving along the motorway and started touching her.

She said none of the incidents had progressed to full sex.

The witness said she had not been sexually active “in any shape or form” before these encounters.

Miss Livingstone put it to her that it had been a consensual relationship.

The former student replied: “There wasn’t a relationship.

“I was abused. I did not consent.

“I told him, ‘what would you do if this was your daughter?’”

Miss Livingstone put it to the witness that “not once” had she told Clark to stop.

She said: “That’s categorically false.

“It’s a very hard thing to admit that your ‘fight or flight’ didn’t kick in.”

Clark, of Ettrick Loan, Edinburgh, pleaded not guilty at Falkirk Sheriff Court to a total of nine charges of sexually assaulting girls at the school, aged between 11 and 18, between August 2011 to mid-February 2019.

The particular incidents involving the 17-year-old are said to have taken place in 2018.

The trial continues.

TRIAL: School teacher James Clark admitted to having sexual contact with a pupil, then aged 17, but insisted it had been consensual.