Teacher guilty of sex assault on pupil

THE former head of Omagh Music Society has been found guilty of the sexual assault of a young pupil.

David Baxter (65), of Killadeas Road, Lisnarick, was accused of sexually touching a child under 13 on an unknown date between February 1 and April 30, 2018.

Baxter, who was also head of music at Erne Integrated College in Enniskillen, was found guilty of the charge at Enniskillen Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

During the hearing, it emerged the initial allegations of inappropriate behaviour had been investigated by the former principal of Erne Integrated, but the Education Authority and Social Services found them to be without merit.

The court heard evidence from the victim, who attended Erne Integrated from 2013 to 2018.

She said Baxter began befriending her when she was around 11 or 12, and at a time when she was being bullied.

“I think he knew I was vulnerable and that I might trust him,” she said. “As the years went on I started realising the things he was doing were not okay.”

The complainant said the defendant would invite her to his class at lunchtime, and tried to get her to join the school choir.

She said, “Then things started happening that made me feel really uncomfortable.”

She said Baxter ‘became very touchy’ and started holding her hands, or would rub them commenting on how cold and tiny they were.

“There was another incident where I was watching a class perform a song and he came up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders and rocked me back and forth in time with the music,” she told the court on Tuesday.

She described him paying particular attention to her and offering to lend her a keyboard to practice over the school holidays.

When she went to his room to collect this, he entered his store with her and the door closed behind them and other pupils remained in the classroom.

He encouraged her to sit beside him and in the course of this placed his hand on her thigh.

multiple images

The student also claimed Baxter had multiple images of students on his phone.

“We were suspicious he was taking photos in class, which he was,” she told the court.

“We asked if we could use his phone as a guitar tuner, and got into his photo file and deleted all those pictures of me and my friends. There were hundreds of photos of students as young as 11 that did not know their photos were being taken.”

She said she had reported her concerns to the school’s Child Protection Officer, but ‘nothing was done’, and she was told ‘just don’t go to his classes’.

The court also heard from a classroom assistant, who became distressed several times while giving evidence, who said she was left extremely concerned by Baxter’s behaviour on a choir trip to Cork.

She claimed Baxter encouraged the child to call him ‘Tour Daddy’, and he would place himself in a position where girls on the trip would be in close contact with him, or have to squeeze past him.

She went on to explain her shock when Baxter asked her to take the boys and some of the older girls out shopping as he had organised a party for some of the girls in their room and he would be ‘babysitting’.

The classroom assistant said he was annoyed when she and another staff member called off the party so they could ‘keep these children safe’.

The witness said she too reported her concerns to the school’s Child Protection Officer. She was later told the matter had been reported to the Board of Governors who were ‘taking it very seriously’.

The court also heard from another former pupil of Baxter’s, who had attended the trip to Cork, and who gave evidence that she did not witness any inappropriate behaviour.

In his own evidence to the court, Baxter said the alleged victim’s mother had encouraged her to take part in a church concert he was holding, and afterwards the mother told him to give him a hug.

He said it was a ‘light hug’.

With regard an alleged incident in a bell tower, he said he had never taken the complainant there.

In relation to another alleged incident in a storeroom, Baxter said the student had been looking for a keyboard and had followed him into get it.

He said he showed her how to use the keyboard, but denied she sat on his knee. He denied putting his hand on her thigh, or having any physical contact with her.

That incident had been reported to the school principal, and Baxter said Social Services investigated but no wrongdoing was found.

‘very sad’

He said he was ‘very sad’ about the whole situation.

Baxter accepted there would have been images of pupils on his phone ‘from time-to-time’ as he ran the school Facebook page.

The defendant said the incident had been investigated by the principal, who no longer works at the school, and he had found no issue with the photos.

Finding the touching was sexual, District Judge Alana McSorley said, “The evidence of the other witnesses was to contextualise the fact that Dr Baxter was aware of previous allegations against him by more than one person.”

The case has been adjourned until next month to allow for the preparation of pre-sentence reports.