A MALE teacher caressed the back and shoulders of a young girl during a school hall talk, a court heard yesterday.

Neil Francis, 33, denies eight counts of sexual assault against three girls under 13 at a North Yorkshire primary school.

It is alleged that Mr Francis, currently suspended from the school where the three girls were pupils, touched, stroked or rubbed their arms, legs, back and hair a number of times.

Yesterday, a teaching assistant and another teacher told Teesside Crown Court how they both saw him stroking the back and shoulders of a pupil during a talk in the school hall. The teaching assistant described it as a “caress”, but did not challenge him immediately, instead reporting it to her head of department a fortnight later.

Asked by Peter Makepeace, defending, why this was so, she said: “It was not my place.”

The teacher told the jury she saw Mr Francis run his finger along the girl’s shoulders.

“There was a time when the relationship was not as much teacher/pupil as it should have been,” she added.

The court heard how one of the girls told her mother that Mr Francis had said to her: “What goes on in the classroom stays in the classroom.”

When asked by her mother if Mr Francis had ever touched her intimately, she said: “Yes, sometimes, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

The girl’s mother said she realised something was wrong when her daughter refused to go to school, since she “always loved school”.

Mr Francis, of Castlemartin, Ingleby Barwick, near Stockton, was interviewed by police, but not until a year after the allegations were made against him.

He told officers he had once held hands with a girl at the school, but only after she put her hand into his as they walked across a playground.

He said he would put his arm around a pupil if they were upset, but denied ever having stroked a pupil on any part of their body.

He denied having a sexual interest in children or abusing a position of trust, saying he could think of no reason why the allegations had been made. The trial continues.