Instructor is accused of groping 15 L-plate pupils
A DRIVING instructor was yesterday accused in court of sexually assaulting 15 of his students during their lessons.
Neil Addison, 55, is alleged to have groped the young women during tuition over a period of more than three years in Fife.
Five of his alleged victims gave evidence at Dundee Sheriff Court on the first day of his trial.
A 22-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the jury Addison had repeatedly brushed his hands over her breast after telling her she had hair on her top. Two of the women said that over a series of lessons Addison had started out touching them on the knee – before gripping the tops of their thighs after becoming more ‘comfortable’.
Another alleged victim said she had refused to get back in a car with him after the first time he touched her.
Others said they only continued with their tuition with him because they had already booked their driving tests and paid for blocks of lessons.
Giving evidence, a former pupil said Addison had grabbed her with his fingers on the inside of her thighs.
Addison’s lawyer asked how she would respond if he suggested Addison, of Cupar, Fife, had only tapped her leg. She replied: ‘I would laugh in your face.’
One of the women told the court she began taking lessons with Addison in March 2016.
She said he was ‘friendly enough’ in the beginning, but that things turned ‘the longer they went on’.
The woman added: ‘If I did something well he would reach over and give you like an encouraging squeeze.
‘The longer I went the higher his hand would go and the longer he would leave it.
‘The longer it went on the more comfortable he got and he was thinking, “She’s not pushing me away – I’ll move up and leave it for longer”. It got to the point he was at the top of my thigh.
Another woman said Addison had touched and squeezed her upper thigh for around ‘eight to 12 seconds’ as she negotiated a roundabout.
The woman added: ‘I didn’t want to get back in a car with him – that was my last lesson with him.
‘It was scary because of how vulnerable I felt with him being an older man in a car with me, a young girl.’
Addison denies 15 charges on indictment, allegedly committed between June 2014 and August 2017.
The trial, before Sheriff Tom Hughes and a jury of eight men and seven women, continues.
‘It was scary because of how vulnerable I felt’