Art teacher ‘would drop his pencil then look up girls’ skirts’
Abuse took place over 11 years, court told
THREE schoolgirls told a court yesterday their ‘creepy’ art teacher regularly dropped his pencil in order to look up their skirts.
James Skelton Smith, 57, who taught at a state secondary school, touched one of the 14-year-olds on her inner thigh, it was claimed.
He was also accused of going into a cupboard with a pupil and putting his hands on her bottom to push her up to get painting equipment from a high shelf.
One pupil, now 15, said she felt ‘really violated’ when he touched her upper thigh with the palm of his hand on two separate occasions last year.
The girl broke down in tears as she gave evidence to the hearing at Dundee Sheriff Court.
She said she had told her mother about her concerns over Smith, but that she didn’t take it seriously and thought her daughter was repeating rumours among pupils over Smith’s behaviour in class.
She told the court Smith would drop his pencil, bend down quickly but take his time in getting back up again, with his eyes on her legs.
Another 15-year- old said she was ‘really weirded out and confused’ after seeing Smith drop his pencil several times in front of her desk and her classmate’s desks and then crawling under the desks to pick it up.
The girls denied suggestions by defence advocate Jonathan Crowe that they were telling lies and simply joining in with previous gossip and rumour among pupils about Smith.
A 25-year- old woman, a former pupil at the school, said Smith had indecently assaulted her in an art store cupboard in 2010 after asking her if she needed any help in getting up onto a stool.
Despite her telling him she did not, she said he placed ‘a hand or hands’ on her bottom and pushed her up onto the high stool.
She denied a suggestion from Mr Crowe that Smith might simply have been assisting her.
Asked by Mr Crowe why she had waited nine years to come forward with her allegations, she said that after reading about similar claims from other pupils in the press she knew it was the right time.
She said she had not said anything previously, as she thought it would not have been taken seriously at the time.
‘You have to remember that I was a 16-year-old girl,’ she told the court.
Smith, of Dundee, denies repeatedly dropping a pencil or similar to the floor, bending down to retrieve it and while bending, looking up the skirts of female pupils, to their fear and alarm, between August 15, 2016 and July 1, 2018.
He denies indecently assaulting four children at a school between January 2009 and January this year.
Prosecutors also allege that he assaulted a woman at an address on an occasion between June 1 and December 31, 2008.
Another woman is said to have been indecently assaulted at a school between January 1 and March 31, 2009. The same woman was allegedly touched inappropriately and kissed by Smith on Camperdown Street in Dundee between March 1 and 31, 2009.
Smith is also said to have assaulted several women at multiple addresses in the city, over an 11-year period between 2008 and 2019.
The case was adjourned until September 30.