THE former head teacher of a Southampton secondary school has gone on trial for sex offences against a teenager during the late 1970s.

Richard Hilary, who was at the helm of Chamberlayne Park School in Weston for 12 years, indecently assaulted a 15-year-old girl in the grounds of Winchester Cathedral under cover of darkness, a court heard.

The alleged victim described how Hilary asked her to meet him after school on a rainy, December night, then took her to a quiet area in the Outer Close beneath a tree, where he indecently assaulted her.

Daily Echo:

Chamberlayne Park School when Mr Hilary was headteacher

“We stood under a yew tree and the cars were coming round the corner so we moved so we were in the shade,” she told Winchester Crown Court.

She said that immediately afterwards she secretly followed Hilary, only to find him happily chatting with his wife at the stall she owned inside the building which houses the Kings Walk Antique Market.

“He was having a hot drink and laughing and joking with his wife,” she said. “I walked home in a daze. I just locked it away.”

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Richard Hilary outside court yesterday

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, tearfully described how, on another day, the then 28-year-old picked her up in his white Austin Allegro car, took her to the Farley Mount beauty spot and physically forced her to commit a sex act on him, which left her retching.

In response Hilary called her a “silly girl”.

“Almost the worst thing was that he started to laugh at me,” she added.

She said he also ended up “sort of laughing” when he discovered during the third incident that she was wearing childish “girly knickers”.

At the time of the alleged assaults, Hilary was a physical education teacher at Winchester’s Montgomery of Alamein Secondary School, now part of Kings’ School.

Recently married, he was living with his wife in a flat in Kings Worthy, to which he also took the teenager “to make up for all the bad things he had done”.

“I asked him why he was with me when he had really only just got married,” said the alleged victim.

“He said I reminded him of his girlfriend when he was in America doing a masters. The girl was the love of his life but he’d had to leave her behind.”

The woman said that when she discovered many years later that Hilary was a head teacher she considered visiting Chamberlayne Park School to confront him.

“He took advantage of me and, on two specific occasions, did things I now realise were abuse,” she said.

The alleged victim did not tell her family what had happened to her, opening up for the first time during counselling eight years ago.

Hilary, 63, of Northend Lane, Droxford, denies three counts of indecent assault between December 1977 and December 1979.

Proceeding