A SCHOOL head dismissed allegations that she had sexual relations with a young teenage boy as “fantasy” and “a figment” of her accuser’s imagination.

Anne Lakey said the suggestion that she would conduct such an affair was “absolutely outrageous”, but she was unable to explain why the now 40-year-old man would make the claims.

Extracts from Ms Lakey’s police interviews were read to Durham Crown Court on the fourth day of her trial today (Friday June 27).

Then head of history at a Wearside comprehensive school, she is accused of grooming the impressionable boy, aged 13 or 14 at the time, before regularly having sex with him at her home in Stanley, County Durham, over a period of several months in the late 1980s.

The court was told that although he knew she was a teacher, the boy was not a pupil of the defendant.

His complaint was only passed on to police in December 2012 after which she was suspended from her role as chief executive of the Durham Federation of Schools, an amalgamation of Deerness Valley and Fyndoune comprehensives, in Ushaw Moor and Sacriston.

Interviewed by police in early January last year, she conceded she knew the boy and had allowed him and some of his friends into her home at the time.

But, asked if she ever had sex with the boy, she told Detective Sergeant Wayne Brannigan: “It’s absolutely untrue. I had no sexual relationship with him.

“It’s making me angry, him saying these things.”

But asked why he would now make such claims now she said she could not explain it as she had got on well with him at the time, but had barely seen him for the last 20 years.

She told the detective the boy was, “quite obnoxious in many ways”, adding: “I was a professional person and have an unblemished record.”

The court heard from defence character witness Paul McHugh, an educational leadership consultant, who has worked with Ms Lakey in recent years, monitoring the progress of the federation in overcoming “failed” status.

He said she has helped the federation become, “one of the most improved schools in the country”.

“I would put it down to the drive of Ms Lakey and her senior team.

“She was described in a Department for Education pamphlet that went round the country as ‘a visionary leader’.

“That’s certainly the way I would see her,” added Mr McHugh.

Ms Lakey, of Oxhill Villas, Stanley, denies four counts of indecency with a child and five of indecent assault.

Her trial resumes on Monday (June 30).