A music instructor at a Perthshire school told a 16-year-old pupil “the two of us should have children together”, a jury was told on Wednesday.
The pupil, now a 22-year-old university student, said the remark was made at a Christmas concert in the Perthshire school’s central hall, during her final year.
She said she had posed for a photograph during a break with the teacher, James Clark, 56, and other staff.
She wept in the witness box after telling a jury: “James Clark touched my bum”.
She said: “He [Clark] reached down and grabbed one of my bum cheeks.
“He quickly grabbed it, then I moved away.”
She said that later in the evening, Clark told her: “The two of us should have children together.”
She said he “described what they would look like, basically describing me”.
She said the hall was “full with people but there was no-one present at the conversation other than the two of us”.
She added: “He’d made flirty comments before.”
Defence’s alternative version of events
Defence counsel Sarah Livingstone told the witness Clark “categorically denied” touching her bottom at the event.
Miss Livingstone also suggested the conversation had taken place while he and the girl were posing together for the photo and that Clark had remarked, “We look like a married couple, just imagine how pretty our children would be – tall and blue eyed.”
The witness replied: “The implication was that he would like to have had children with me.”
She said she had thought Clark was “an okay person” until, some years after she had left school, it emerged allegations of sexual misconduct had been made by another S6 girl.
She added: “I did think he was a creep, as did most people at the school.”
The charges
She was giving evidence on the fourth day of a trial at Falkirk Sheriff Court, where Clark denies sexually assaulting girls, aged between 11 and 18, at the school.
Earlier in the trial, another ex-pupil said Clark had told her “I’m your School Dad” when she challenged him about hitting her on the bottom with his hands and drumsticks.
Clark, 56, of Ettrick Loan, Edinburgh pleads not guilty to nine charges of sexual assault and making sexual remarks to pupils.
He is alleged to have struck three girls on the buttocks with drumsticks.
Clark also faces nine alternative charges, alleging while the girls were pupils and he was an adult looking after them, he engaged in sexual activity with them or directed at them.
The alleged offences are said to have spanned a period from August 2011 to mid-February 2019.
The trial, before Sheriff Alastair Brown and a jury, continues.
