Primary teacher accused of six-month assault on pupil

A TEACHER has gone on trial accused of attacking and injuring a girl in his class over a period of six months.

Christopher Scott is accused of injuring the girl by assaulting her on various occasions at a primary school in Stirlingshire.

It was alleged at Stirling Sheriff Court that Scott began carrying out the attacks the month he arrived at the school. The pupil and the school cannot be named for legal reasons.

It was alleged that between 3 September, 2010, and 10 March, 2011, he assaulted the girl by pulling her by the arm, and twisting her arm behind her.

The single charge also alleges he pushed her on the body, twisted the skin on her arms with his hands and seized her by the arm.

He is then said to have struck her on the arm, and tripped her up by her foot whereby she fell to the ground, and all of these are said to have been to her injury.

Scott, 33, of Braco, Perthshire, denies the charge.

The alleged victim gave evidence by video link.

When asked who her teacher was, she began to cry, before saying: “Mr Scott. He used to hurt me.”

She added: “He used to grab my arm and it would hurt. He would pull at it, holding it really tight. He did this a lot of times.”

When asked by the depute fiscal Emma Whyte where this happened, she replied: “In the classroom and in the PE hall.

“He used to grab me and tip me off my chair. He’d pull it back and make me fall off it. He’d pull the top of my arm, and down at my wrist.”

The girl said she could not remember how often it happened in the PE hall, but recalling one occasion she said: “It was after the class had finished and everyone was back in the classroom.

“He pulled my arm with his whole hand and it was really tight. It was really sore.”

When she was asked how he seemed when this happened, she replied: “He looked angry. His face looked really red and he had his fingers gripped together.”

When asked how she felt when Scott allegedly hurt her, she said: “It made me really sad and upset because he was hurting me. It stopped when he went away on a two-week course and we got told that he was not coming back.”

She said she did not tell anyone because she was “too scared”.

“I didn’t know if they’d believe me and I thought they might tell Mr Scott and he might do even more bad things to me,” she said.

She said was left injured by what happened. She said: “I was left with what looked like burn marks and finger marks on my upper arms.

“I remember looking at them and seeing them after school. They were sore.”

In cross-examination by solicitor Peter Winning, she said she didn’t like Scott.

She said: “I didn’t like him when he started hurting me. I thought he was going to be nice, but turned out he wasn’t.”

Mr Winning said: “My client will say he never grabbed you or pushed you.”

In tears, she replied: “He did.”

Earlier, the school’s head teacher said that she knew the alleged victim “fairly well” and that the girl’s behaviour had “gone downhill” since October 2010, a month after Scott arrived.

She said: “Her behaviour had changed from being a little bit moody to full escalation of not complying. It amounted to her not following the teacher’s instructions, sitting on the cupboard, banging her heels and leaving the class before it finished.

“I kept in regular contact with her family and asked Mr Scott to keep in contact with her mother. When it came to December 2010 she was very emotional and very tearful.”

The trial continues.