Girls claim sexual assault by Illawarra school teacher

Angela Thompson

Two young girls who claim they were molested by an Illawarra school teacher disclosed the alleged abuse later that night, as they were preparing to go to bed and swapped stories.

The girls were staying overnight in the guestroom of former Albion Park Public School assistant principal Mark Robert Forbes and his wife on March 27, 2013, as their own parents attended a concert.

In a recorded police interview played during Forbes’s trial at Wollongong District Court on Tuesday, the older girl described Forbes touching her “here [indicating her chest], there [her thigh], and then he went into my shorts”, as she sat on a bed beside the 53-year-old.

She said the younger girl, who had been sitting on Forbes’s other side, later told her that Forbes was “doing the same kind of thing” to her, at the same time.

The girls were reading in a shared double bed later that night, when the younger one claimed additional interference from Forbes, the older girl further claims.

Forbes, 53, has pleaded not guilty to five charges of indecently assaulting a child and a single charge of aggravated sexual intercourse with a child aged under 10.

Defence barrister Susan Oliver, acting for Forbes, suggested during cross-examination on Tuesday that her client’s handling of the older girl was confined to her shoulder, upper arm and “perhaps” her hip – never her nipple area, as the girl alleges.

The girl disagreed that some the the touching was necessary to stop her slipping off a railing along the bed.

“I suggest … Mark saved you [from] slipping by grabbing you by your left wrist,” Ms Oliver said.

“I don’t remember that happening,” the girl replied.

Four of the charges – including the most serious of sexual intercourse – relate to the younger girl.

In a separate recorded interview part-played to the jury on Tuesday, the younger girl told police Forbes “made me put my hand in his pants” and had performed sexual acts on her.

“He just did that but I don’t know why he did that,” the girl continued.

“He was just quiet … he said to keep it a secret.”

Forbes’s wife drove the girls home and alerted their parents to the allegations that night, after the girls shared their stories with her.

The trial continues on Wednesday before Judge Mark Marien.

Source: illawarramercury