Accussed denies sex activity with girls (From Dorset Echo)
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Accussed denies sex activity with girls
11:30am Tuesday 26th February 2013 in News By Harry Hogger
A MAN is standing trial over allegations of sexual activity with two teenage girls in Dorchester.
Frank Maurice Cooper, 35, denies six charges of sexual activity with a child and is on trial at Dorchester Crown Court.
He is accused of touching two 14-year-olds in September of last year.
Prosecutor Martin Lanchester told the court that the two girls met a group of friends at the Borough Gardens in the afternoon and in the evening they took a tent up to a play area off Maiden Castle Road with the intention of camping there for the night. Cooper, who had been drinking, joined the group at the Borough Gardens and accompanied them up to the play area.
Jurors watched a recording of an interview one of the alleged victims, who is now 15, gave to police the following day.
She said: “He was just doing inappropriate stuff with me.”
The girl said Cooper touched her on several occasions and her friends saw him doing it.
She said: “I was really shocked and didn’t know what to do.”
The girl added: “I was really upset and I was in tears.”
She said that she had not consented to Cooper touching her at any stage.
Asked how she later felt about what had happened to her, the girl replied: “A bit shocked and a bit scared to be honest.”
In cross-examination the girl denied a suggestion put by Tim Shorter, representing Cooper, that she had ‘made up the story’.
The defendant is also accused of inappropriately touching another girl on the same evening.
Mr Lanchester said Cooper, of Millfield, Chard, Somerset, was arrested at the scene after one of the girls’ friends contacted the police.
He said when officers arrived at around 1.15am it was apparent the defendant ‘clearly had been drinking’.
When he was interviewed Cooper said he did not have a clear recollection of the night’s events but denied inappropriately touching the girls.
Mr Lanchester said: “He said there was no touching at all of either of the two young girls involved.”
The case continues.
