A LESBIAN love affair between a Perth teacher and her former student began after the vulnerable teenage student left school, a court has been told.
Elizabeth Anne Crothers, 50, went on trial today in the West Australian District Court charged with 10 counts of indecent dealing and 13 of sexual penetration of the girl, starting when she was a 16-year-old student between November 1998 and March 1999.
Ms Crothers, a mother of two, who was living with her defacto husband at the time, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In his opening address, prosecutor Tony Elliott said the relationship between Ms Crothers and the girl began innocently but became sexual in November 1998.
He said during their affair Ms Crothers and the girl sexually penetrated each other with their fingers and performed oral sex on each other.
On one occasion, Ms Crothers had digitally penetrated her teenage student’s vagina in a toilet cubicle at Perth‘s well-known Cottesloe beach, he said.
He said a witness would testify going to Cottesloe Beach during the January 1999 school holidays with Ms Crothers and the girl.
"They were in a toilet cubicle together, she heard giggling from a cubicle," Mr Elliott said.
"She waited for her friend to come out … she was followed by the accused."
Ms Crothers’ lawyer Mark Trowell QC said his client and the girl became lesbian lovers but it was after the girl had left school.
"That type of relationship is bound to raise eyebrows and raise questions if there was something inappropriate occurred when the child was a student," Mr Trowell said.
"Elizabeth Crothers says she was involved with the girl in a relationship, she says sex was part of that relationship.
"She says there was no sexual intimacy when they were in a student-teacher relationship."
Mr Elliott said Ms Crothers pursued the girl, firstly by counselling and consoling the teenager after she claimed to have been beaten.
"The accused made the most of the insecurities of a girl who was suffering from low self-esteem and was questioning her own sexuality at the time the approaches were made," Mr Elliott said.
When questioned by police last year, Ms Crothers told police she had never had any feelings for the girl, telling them she was "ugly as a hatful of arseholes", Mr Elliott said.
The trial is set down for two weeks.
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