Court: Teacher raped student on her desk

A teacher raped an eight-year-old student on a desk at a primary school in Western Australia as part of a years-long, increasingly serious sexual abuse pattern, a court was told.

Alexander Ian McCook, 70, appeared in the District Court today on charges of sexually abusing two girls between 1997 and 2002 while he was a teacher at a Wheatbelt primary school.

The two girls, who did not know each other, both claim that Mr. McCook manipulated them through highly inappropriate touching before raping them.

The court was told that the youngest was just four years old when the alleged abuse began.

Prosecutor Brett Tooker said Mr McCook had been a teacher at the school since 1990 and began showing sexual interest in one of his third-graders in 1997.

The victim, now 24, told police that Mr. McCook’s abuse began with him touching her over her clothes and then in her underwear, and that he eventually raped her in the school’s preschool room.

Shortly afterwards, he raped her again on a desk in a classroom.

The second girl claims to have been repeatedly abused between 2000 and 2002.

“These are two women who share a common story – they are remarkably similar stories, even though they are not related and do not know each other,” Tooker told the jury.

During the trial, a conversation that the younger victim had with Mr McCook and secretly recorded on her phone was played. According to the prosecution, this amounts to an admission.

But defense attorney Gary Rodgers said his client denies all 13 charges of indecent exposure to a child and sexual penetration of a child.

The trial before Judge John Staude is expected to last seven days.