A 57-year-old man has claimed an alleged sexual encounter with a 16-year-old girl was consensual.
Gary Hempseed said the girl willingly engaged in sexual activity after a night out in Dunfermline.
He has been charged with sexual assault and is on trial at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court.
He said the woman, who is now 18 but cannot be named for legal reasons, was already at his house when he arrived home after he had offered her a place to stay.
The court heard the teenager was initially upstairs but came down to have a smoke.
Giving evidence in his own defence, Hempseed said: “She said could she get a cigarette and I said to come down for it.
“She came downstairs and had one of my t-shirts on.
“I sat in the floor and we were talking.
“We were sitting talking and I put my hand on her knee to reassure her it was nothing to worry about because she was upset because she had lost her phone.
“I don’t think I realised I still had my hand on her knee. She started opening her legs”
Interrupted by phone call
He said that the woman had continued to be responsive to his advances and he realised she was not wearing underwear.
The former long-distance lorry driver said they continued to engage in consensual sexual activity until they were interrupted by a phone call from friends, who were also due to stay at the property that night.
Hempseed told the court at this point the woman offered to let him take sexual photos of her, providing he did not show her face.
The court was previously told by the girl she had pretended to be asleep during the incident but had escaped and run down the street wearing nothing but a t-shirt.
Hot tub
A second woman had previously told the court of an incident in Hempseed’s hot tub in which he guided another man’s hand to within inches of her groin.
During cross-examination by fiscal depute Jamie Hilland, Hempseed admitted placing the man’s hand on the woman’s knee but said it was in the context of leaving them alone in the hot tub.
He said: “I wasn’t encouraging anything. I just left them to it.”
Asked why he had done it, he admitted: “I don’t know”.
The charges
Hempseed, of Skye Road, Dunfermline, is accused of multiple offences against three women between 2007 and 2020.
He is alleged to have used lewd and libidinous practices towards the first woman at a caravan park in the Stirling area between June 2007 and October 2008.
He is also said to have sexually assaulted the same woman at an address in Dunfermline between August 2012 and August 2020.
It is alleged he sexually assaulted the second woman at various addresses in Dunfermline between November 2013 and November 2019.
He is also said to have engaged in sexual communications with her.
The third woman is said to have been sexually assaulted at an address in Dunfermline in November 2019.
Hempseed is alleged to have taken photographs of her private parts on the same date.
In all, Hempseed faces 9 separate charges.
A single charge of sexual assaults which took place between November 2013 and November 2014 was dropped by the Crown.
He denies all the charges and the trial, before Sheriff Charles Macnair continues
