A guitar instructor accused of sexually abusing eight adolescent students at several secondary schools encouraged a difficult student to ‘go home and have a w**k to relax,’ according to court testimony.
Keith Jenner, 56, allegedly made ‘comments about masturbating’ to the girl, now 18, while they sat together in a music room.
Jenner taught him in a 4ft by 12ft music room from the time he was in second year in 2017 until the boy left school at the onset of the Covid outbreak in 2020.
‘If I was becoming a bit anxious, if I was struggling with the music, he’d suggest, ‘You should go home and have a w**k to relax,’ he told Falkirk Sheriff Court.
According to the court, Mr Jenner reportedly stroked the student on the inner thigh and showed two other schoolboys a picture of a partially nude lady.
Jenner has denied allegations of sexual assault, pressure into seeing a sexual picture, and directing sexual communication without consent.
‘It wouldn’t be every class, but it happened enough,’ the youngster, now 18, told prosecutor Katie Cunningham.
‘It usually happened when it was only me – when one of the other lads was away.’
‘I suppose he attempted to mask it as a pleasant thing, to soothe me if I was suffering with a piece of music, but it wasn’t good.’
Jenner would also touch the inner of his thigh for 10 to 15 seconds,’moving his hand a small bit,’ he claimed.
The boy claimed it made him feel ‘uncomfortable, a little anxious,’ and that if he knew he’d be alone with Jenner during a class, he’d be ‘sort of dreading it a tiny bit’.
In addition to alleged sexual assaults, Jenner, who worked for Falkirk Council, is accused of making’sexual verbal exchanges’ with youngsters and showing two schoolboys a film of a partially naked lady.
The incidences are reported to have occurred during a three-year period, between 1 January 2017 and 29 January 2020, at four high schools in Stirlingshire and one in the West Lothian geographical region.
He is accused of touching four schoolgirls, ages 15 and 16, and four schoolboys, ages 13 to 15, on the body and sexually assaulting them.
He is also accused of showing a video of a “partially clad female” to two of the allegedly abused boys, ages 14 and 15.
Jenner reportedly targeted two additional juveniles, a boy and a girl, both 16 at the time, with sexual comments ‘for the purposes of deriving sexual enjoyment or embarrassing, upsetting, or scaring them,’ although they are not believed to have been sexually abused.
Jenner, of Bonnybridge, Stirlingshire, is represented by Mark Stewart QC and denies all 12 accusations, including eight counts of sexual assault, two counts of directing a sexual communication without agreement, and two counts of compulsion into seeing a pornographic photograph.
The court heard that Jenner, as the EIS teaching union rep for music teachers in the Falkirk region, was influential in getting glass panels installed in music room doors.
However, she agreed with defence attorney Mark Stewart, QC, that ‘it might be correct’ that the only time he patted her on the leg was to say ‘well done.’
The trial, which is being presided over by Sheriff Derek Hamilton and a jury, will resume tomorrow.
