Tutor on trial for debagging pupils

9:46am Wednesday 26th September 2001

A TUTOR accused of smearing a public schoolboy's naked bottom with face paint confessed he acted “reprehensibly”.

Timothy Knight, aged 27, of Newlands Park, Sydenham, made the confession but denied getting sexual thrills from seeing 11-year-old boys in the nude.

Instead he claimed he was just “going along” with the lads' games.

Knight is accused of 19 indecent assaults on a dozen boys in a catalogue of abuse which included “debagging” the lads by pulling down pyjamas to expose their naked bottoms

He also allegedly gave boys “wedgies” by lifting them up by their underpants to cause them discomfort.

Knight admitted to the jury he painted a letter W on a boy's naked buttocks in a dormitory after a school play.

But he told Inner London Crown Court how he walked in to find the boy “mooning” to the other boys during a school trip to Wales.

Knight denied pulling down the boy's pants but admitted painting letters to spell the word “wow” on his buttocks.

Asked by Simon Gedge defending what he thought of his actions now he said: “It's hard to describe the enormous sense of disappointment I feel to have been anywhere near the scene.”

But he went on to deny instigating or urging boys to carry out debaggings which occurred during a three-week period in the Brecon Beacons and on a hockey trip to Holland.

Prosecuting, Mark Lodgsdon quizzed Knight on an occasion when he dared a boy to pull down his pants and sit in a muddy puddle.

He said: “Your actions were entirely premeditated. They were designed in effect to encourage those boys themselves so you could take advantage of them.”

The trial continues.

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