Student seen crying after teacher’s alleged in-flight sex assault

Witnesses have given evidence at the trial of a music teacher accused of inappropriately touching a student on an international flight.

A witness has told of seeing a student who accused her music teacher of indecently touching her during a flight silently crying as she sat next to the teacher on the plane.

The Crown witness, one of a group of students returning from Japan in 2011, said she was walking down the aisle of the Jetstar plane when she saw the alleged victim crying.

The alleged victim has told a court she was indecently touched by her high school instrument teacher 11 years ago, when she was 17, after cabin lights dimmed during an international flight.

She said the teacher put his hand on her leg and then under her pants, touching the outside of her vagina, before she moved his hand away and told him to stop.

The man – who cannot be identified to protect the identity of the alleged victim – has pleaded not guilty to two charges alleging he committed an indecent act on a female, without her consent, during the Jetstar flight.

The former student made a complaint to police in 2019.

A young woman, who had been part of the 2011 music tour group, told Brisbane District Court she initially sat next to the alleged victim on the Jetstar flight, but later moved to sit next to her boyfriend.

She said when she later got up to go the toilet she saw the alleged victim had moved to an aisle seat, next to the accused teacher, who was in a window seat.

“I did notice (the student) was visibly upset,” she told the court.

“She had been crying. It looked like she was doing so silently and she had her face turned towards the aisle.”

She said the student looked like she was holding back sobs.

Defence counsel Craig Eberhardt QC asked the witness why she had never mentioned seeing the alleged victim silently crying when she made a statement to police in 2019.

“I genuinely did not remember until later,” said the witness, who said she was only an acquaintance of the alleged victim.

Gold Coast Airport in 2018

The court heard the woman first mentioned seeing the student had been crying when speaking to the prosecutor, about a week before the trial.

The alleged victim earlier told the court she froze when the teacher, whom she had also considered to be a friend, touched her.

She said after getting off the plane at Gold Coast Airport she told her then boyfriend and her best friend, now her husband, that a teacher had inappropriately touched her.

However the former boyfriend told the court that he was not at the airport when the alleged victim arrived back from Japan, as he was working that day.

He said it was a few days later, possibly at his then girlfriend’s home, that she told him there had been an inappropriate incident during her flight home.

The alleged victim’s best friend at the time, now her husband, told the court her boyfriend had been with them at the airport when she told them something had happened on the flight.

He said she told them that during the flight the teacher had run his hand up her leg.

He said when asked where he was, she pointed to the teacher, standing with his wife and children, but told them, “Don’t do anything.”

The husband said a few years later she told him more of what had happened on the flight, after telling him she had just spoken to the police.

He said she told him the teacher ran his hand up until he reached her underwear and started to touch skin and she told him to stop.

The husband said: “I said, ‘You didn’t tell me at the time.’ She said, ‘ I didn’t know what to say.’ ”

Under cross-examination on the second day of the trial Mr Eberhardt put to the alleged victim that the incident on the plane did not happen.

“No, that’s not true,” she replied.

The trial is continuing.