A teacher who started a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old pupil said he was ‘like a Jimmy Savile’, a court heard.
Ryan Fisher, 29, complained to his victim that lowering the age of consent ‘made sense’ but complained that everyone was ‘outraged’, it is alleged.
He is said to have texted the girl: ‘I mean, in France and other countries it’s 14, ha ha ha.’
Fisher is accused of having sex with the youngster at his home in Troon, Ayrshire, and on waste ground near the town’s Marr Rugby Club on multiple occasions when she was 14 and 15.
He is also said to have engaged in sexual activity and intercourse with her in his car, which he called Basil and had its own Facebook page.
A former high school teacher accused of having sex with a 14-year-old pupil told her ‘I’m not a Jimmy Savile’, Ayr Sheriff Court (file photo) has heard
Fisher is further charged with sending an indecent Skype message to the pupil at Prestwick Academy, where he was then teaching.
The ex-pupil, now 20, told Ayr Sheriff Court she first met Fisher at a wedding and the computer science expert helped with her studies as she was ‘really struggling’.
She said they had almost daily contact on Skype and Facebook and he mentioned he had a girlfriend he lived with.
Fisher took her for a drive in his car called Basil, with its own Facebook page, when she said she was feeling down.
‘He was speaking about his feelings as well, trying to help me with my emotions about school and life in general,’ she said.
But on about the seventh meeting in his car they started kissing and cuddling. ‘He turned around, leaned in and kissed me,’ she said.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I was in shock.’
Fisher, of Troon, denies having unlawful sex, breaching a position of trust and sending a sexually explicit communication for his sexual gratification or for causing humiliation, distress or alarm.
The offences are alleged to have happened between October 2013 and March 2017, while Fisher was a student and qualified teacher.
The alleged victim said she liked being told she looked good after changing an online profile picture, but added: ‘It was weird coming from Ryan.’
She wept as she described the first time Fisher groped her and said they had sex between 10 – 20 times in his car, twice in his house and once in woods, using a condom each time.
The witness said they messaged each other ‘almost in code’ and Fisher told her how to delete the Skype messages.
As he drove her to his home, she had to ‘duck down’ as they passed his mother’s house nearby.
They went to the bedroom he shared with his girlfriend, featuring a black leather bed, and had sex.
She said she had to ‘pick up every single one of my hairs off the bed and leave no trace that I’d been there’.
The sex ended in February 2015, when she was 15 and had a boyfriend.
In April 2016 her mother unlocked her mobile phone, saw the messages and the relationship ‘completely stopped’.
‘She confronted me in my room and I told her everything that had been going on up to that point,’ the witness said.
Fisher told her he had met another Prestwick Academy pupil in a bar and texted: ‘Before I say this, she’s legal, she’s 17 ha ha ha. But I’d still get sacked.’
He said that 20 years earlier ‘you could get away with it’, adding: ‘But times have changed and we live in a Jimmy Savile community, like for example that MP who suggested lowering the age of consent.
‘He made sense but instead everybody was outraged. I mean, in France and where is it, other countries, it’s like 14 ha ha ha.’
Fisher texted: ‘I’m not suggesting it’s right for a teacher to f*** a student – it’s not – but that annoys me.
‘It’s not a joke when you’re going through it. Nobody can understand what it’s like.’
Fisher later texted the witness, asking: ‘Wanna s***?’ and tried to take her to a hotel. ‘Come with me a day or night to a hotel,’ he wrote. ‘Take a pill in the afternoon.’
The girl replied: ‘You’ll need to be on it for a week for it to work’.
But Fisher insisted: ‘If you take it the chances are you’ll be fine e.g. 89.9%.’
One text from Fisher said: ‘I’m like a Jimmy Savile ha ha ha.’
Prosecutor Hayley Robertson asked the witness: ‘What did you take that to mean?’
She replied: ‘He was saying he was like a paedophile.’
Mrs Robertson asked: ‘Looking back, how do you feel now?’
She said: ‘Ashamed. Just so ashamed and violated. My trust was completely broken and I just feel horrible about everything.’
The trial continues.
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