By Sarah McPhee
Lawyers for a Mosman swimming instructor say he denies allegations of abuse against nine girls and have asked a jury to consider any influence parents and the media had on the complaints made.
“Kyle Daniels has never knowingly or intentionally touched any of the complainants in a sexual or indecent manner whatsoever,” defence barrister Leslie Nicholls said on Tuesday.
Kyle James Henk Daniels is on trial charged with abusing nine girls during their swimming lessons.Credit: Oscar Colman
Daniels, 23, has pleaded not guilty in the NSW District Court to five counts of sexual intercourse with a child aged under 10, eight counts of sexual touching of a child and eight counts of indecent assault, including two considered alternative charges.
The Crown alleges he has a sexual interest in young girls and acted on it by deliberately touching the vaginas of nine students, aged five to 10, between 2018 and 2019.
“That is absolutely denied and totally disputed by the accused,” Nicholls said in his opening address.
He said Daniels was an instructor at the Mosman Swim Centre on Sydney’s lower north shore, including for the complainants “but not all the times that they say that he was”, and hands-on touching was an “inherent part” of the role.
“There’s an exception to that, and that’s when the students are being assessed in particular classes,” he said. “In general terms, he agrees that he does have to and did have contact with students during those times that he was a swimming instructor.”
Nicholls asked the jury to bear in mind that it was a 25-metre pool with CCTV covering the area, parents watching nearby, other instructors in the pool, and pool deck supervisors who were not only scrutinising the lessons but also the instructors “as to what they are doing during that lesson”.
He said an issue at the trial would be how police maintained the integrity of CCTV, claiming the “two most important pieces of evidence” in footage of lessons involving two of the complainants was “gone, not there”.
The Crown expects the jury will hear evidence that a number of the girls said the teacher who allegedly touched them wore glasses.
Nicholls said the jury should consider when Daniels started wearing glasses in the pool and whether that impaired his vision at any time relative to when the alleged touching was said to have occurred.
The barrister asked that they “look closely at the reliability of the versions from the complainants”, whether it reached the high standard of proof of beyond reasonable doubt, and “what, if any influence, the parents and/or media had in the complaint being made”.
He expects one complainant’s evidence to include that her father “would not stop asking” about it.
Nicholls said Daniels was “paraded in handcuffs from his house” and walked 50-60 metres down the road while being filmed by someone from the police media unit who distributed the vision to media.
“It’s in those circumstances that we have all of these parents, naturally saying, ‘That’s my daughter’s swim teacher’,” the barrister said. “You’ll see it, throughout these proceedings, the anxiety of them repeatedly asking their children, ‘What’s happened?’”
Nicholls said the evidence of all but one girl was of a “fleeting” touching lasting one, two or three seconds. He said for most, if not all, the girls, “their initial impression is that it was accidental”.
Crown prosecutor Tony McCarthy said that in pre-recorded evidence, one 10-year-old girl, linked to four counts of sexual touching, described the alleged conduct on the outside of her swimming costume as “weird” and “awkward”.
He said another complainant, who said her teacher “kind of looked like a nerd”, said it felt like he was “trying to fix her swimmers” and she was confused because “she didn’t know why he would do this as they were fine”.
McCarthy said a seven-year-old girl told police the accused would grab her swimming costume when she was doing backstroke or “torpedo” and “this made her feel upset”.
In a police interview, played to the jury on Tuesday afternoon, one complainant said she had “felt really uncomfortable” and “didn’t like it” when her teacher put his hands on her, estimating that he held her for “not that long, probably two minutes”.
The seven-year-old said there was a picture of the instructor wearing glasses at the entrance to the swimming centre. She said she didn’t “really know his name that much” but it might have been something like Reece, and agreed with the suggestion that she was guessing.
The girl said she had told her mother after swimming, and her mother asked whether she wanted to change the day of her lesson. “And I said yes ... because I didn’t want him to hold me like that again,” she said.
The trial before Judge Kara Shead continues.
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