A MAN has told a court how he was forced “cower away” from a former teacher’s sexual advances.

Ex-teacher Michael McCarthy, 47, is on trial facing 11 counts of child sex abuse, most of which involve him allegedly striking a teenager on the backside for sexual pleasure.

All offences are alleged to have taken place at a school in the Basildon borough between 1998 and 2017 and involve four different men who allege they were assaulted as teenagers.

Yesterday, a jury at Basildon Crown Court was played a police interview with one of McCarthy’s alleged victims, who stated he had on numerous occasions been slapped on the backside by McCarthy when he was a teenager.

The court heard the alleged victim told police: “When alone with him it was often the case he would slap my bum, which I never thought was appropriate.

“Very inappropriate at the time but I didn’t think it was hugely that much of a problem.

“It was always the case of him saying ‘well done, you’re doing well, you’re getting your work done, you can do it, stop thinking with this’ and him slapping me on the bum.

“I never wanted him to do it and after a few times of it happening I would be cowering away from him when seeing him in private again, but he’d always turn me and do it anyway.

“It was a concerted effort.”

The man, now an adult, said he went back to McCarthy three years after leaving the school to ask for a reference for his university application when he allegedly sexually assaulted him again.

He said: “I was in his office and he asked me to bend over and plug something in.

“There was no need for me to do it at all, I knew it was just an excuse for him to check out my bum.

“In any other circumstance, I would have punched him.

“But I thought that it wasn’t worth it, he did me a favour, and I wouldn’t be seeing him again.”

McCarthy, of Hadleigh Road, in Leigh, denies all charges levelled against him.

The trial continues