A FORMER headteacher has described as “absolutely reprehensible” the suggestion that he lied to police about his alleged involvement with a schoolgirl.

Richard Hilary told Winchester Crown Court that the girl’s allegations that he sexually assaulted her when she was 15 were “completely wrong”.

Jurors heard that during his police interview Hilary’s account was that he has couldn’t even remember talking to the girl.

However, taking the stand in his own defence he said that there had been occasions where the pair had met, after she had left school, including one at Farley Mount near Winchester, where they had kissed in his car and he had touched her over her clothing.

This morning Hilary was asked by prosecutor Matthew Jewell to explain why he never mentioned that meeting to police, suggesting it was an attempt to imply the girl was confused over what happened and when.

Hilary said he had been focussing on the allegations that were being put to him at a specific point in time and his encounter in the car park with the girl when she was over the age of consent, did not enter his head.

Asked why he had ever met the girl at the beauty spot Hilary said: “I think I was flattered, it was a huge mistake. It was madness, I am well aware of that now. I am fighting for my life, my whole teaching career. I am fighting for my existence.”

He was also unable to offer any explanation for how the girl would know details of where he lived at the time or the layout of his bedroom, emphatically denying she had ever been in his home as she had claimed in her evidence.

Hilary, 63, was shown diary entries in which the girl kept accounts of their alleged meetings which he also denied ever happening.

The court had heard how he had been a PE teacher at Winchester’s Montgomery and Alamein school before teaching in Farnborough and then going on to become headteacher at Chamberlayne Park in Southampton, formerly known as Weston Park Girls School.

Hilary of Northend Lane, Droxford denies three counts of indecent assault between December 1977 and December 1979.

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