Former teacher Vasilious Kafataris faces child sex trial in Parramatta District Court

A former Sydney high school English teacher, accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl at his Bankstown home, allegedly had a tendency to act on a sexual interest in teenage girls.

Former teacher Vasilious Kafataris, who is on trial.

A former Sydney high school English teacher, accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl at his Bankstown home, allegedly had a tendency to act on a sexual interest in teenage girls, a court has heard.

Vasilious Kafataris is facing trial after the State Crime Command’s Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad detectives began investigating him in April 2021, following reports he had allegedly sexually touched a 17-year-old girl.

Police raided his Bankstown apartment a month later, when they seized a photo of a teenage girl from his bedside table, as well as a vibrator, a skirt and laptop.

He pleaded guilty in May to two counts of sexually touching a person between 17 and 18 years under special care.

He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of grooming a child for unlawful sexual activity, common assault and indecent assault of a person under 16.

The 56-year-old is fighting charges that include indecent assault of a person under 16.

On Wednesday, a Parramatta District Court jury heard three complainants would give evidence during his trial.

The jury also heard tendency witnesses would give evidence of the 56-year-old’s alleged sexual interest in teenage girls.

That included a woman who was a teenager when Kafataris allegedly engaged in a three-way kiss with her and a friend on the dance floor of the Collingwood Hotel, in Liverpool, in 2000.

The jury heard that on another occasion, Kafataris allegedly stopped his car while he was driving the girl home, kissed her lips and digitally penetrated her.

“ … There was some, like, sexual activity, like he was touching me in my vagina and I wasn’t really into it,’’ she told the court.

“I didn’t want it to go further.’’

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court he stopped and drove her home and asked her to keep the alleged incident “between us”.

The witness also told the court she was drunk when he allegedly kissed her again at the apartment of a friend’s sister.

The court heard Kafataris was allegedly intoxicated on another occasion, when he is accused of shouting at her from outside her house while her parents were asleep so he could enter the home.

Defence barrister Leslie Nicholls told the court the witness had no independent recollection “whatsoever” when she made a statement to police more than 20 years after the alleged incidents.

He questioned whether she was forthcoming with names of people who were at the pub and quizzed her about why she did not name witnesses or give extra details that were in her diary when providing a statement to police.

That included leaving the Collingwood Hotel at 9pm, when she “went on and got smashed” with a friend and bought “Subways”.

The woman said there was no particular reason for omitting details to police.

Prosecutor Georgina Namat told the jury the Crown was relying on a combination of evidence from complainants and tendency witnesses to show Kafataris had a sexual interest in teenage girls and would “act on that interest”.

Kafataris allegedly had sex in his unit weekly with one alleged victim when she was 15.

The trial continues before Judge Alister Abadee.