A 12-year-old girl testified in Supreme Court yesterday that her former primary school teacher fondled her on a number of occasions and tried to put his face on her private parts.

The testimony was the most serious to date in the trial of a 53-year-old Smith's Parish man accused of 11 counts of sexual exploitation of minors while in a position of trust and once charge of inciting a minor to touch him.

The offences are alleged to have occurred between 1997 and 1999 while the man - who cannot be named for legal reasons - was working periodically as a school teacher and also at a church-run summer camp.

"Do you know why you are here?" Crown counsel Juan Wolffe asked the alleged victim yesterday.

"To tell what (the defendant) did to me," the girl replied. "He touched me where he wasn't supposed to."

On further questioning, with the defendant shielded from her view, the girl said her former teacher had touched her between the legs, on her chest and on her vagina.

She said a number of alleged incidents occurred in an art room at her primary school while she was underneath a large, teacher's desk.

"He would put his hand up my skirt or, sometimes, he pulled down my skirt," she said.

The defendant would pull her skirt down to her knees and touched her beneath her underwear, she said.

The young girl was the fourth of 11 alleged victims to testify yesterday when she took the witness box.

Last week, two other girls testified the man had rubbed their stomachs while a third said he rubbed her stomach and moved towards her private parts but stopped when asked.

Testifying before the jury of nine-women and three-men and Assistant Justice Charles-Etta Simmons, the 12-year-old said yesterday, the alleged incidents made her feel "scared and sad".

She said they occurred during school lunch hours or after classes ended for the day and that the accused man would call her over and say he needed to tell her something.

The assaults occurred when the door to the room was closed, she said, and while she asked him to stop he did not.

Mr. Wolffe asked the girl if the defendant did anything else on those occasions.

"He tried to put his face down on my vagina," she replied, adding it made her feel "worried".

In addition to the alleged assaults on the school grounds, the 12-year-old also told the court of an incident following a field trip on which the defendant had taken her class.

She said he dropped off all but three students at the school, and once the other two children were taken to their homes, she was taken to a boat yard in the van.

The defendant put his hands up her dress and on her vagina, she said. "I said `stop' and `can we go'," the girl said, when asked if she had said anything.

She also repeatedly said she could not remember if the man said anything to her during the alleged assaults.

On cross examination, lawyer Elizabeth Christopher asked about the size of the desk and whether the defendant got under it with the girl. The girl said he had not.

Ms Christopher asked whether the alleged assault following the field trip occurred after a trip to the Bio Station or the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.

"I thought they were the same place," the girl replied.

A fifth alleged victim was the final witness to offer evidence yesterday on the seventh day of the trial.

The 11-year-old girl told the court the defendant had grabbed her roughly and kissed her while she was attending a summer camp in 1999.

She also claimed he put his finger up her bottom while playing piggyback with the children at the camp.

In the first incident, the 11-year-old claimed the defendant had been speaking on the telephone and someone came over and told her that the defendant claimed to know her. She then approached the defendant.

"He got off the phone and he grabbed my arm really hard," she said. "Then he started to kiss me. He lifted me up and his tongue touched my tongue."

She said the grab was "hard" and when he was kissing her it felt "disgusting".

But she said she had not said anything to the man when the incident occurred.

In the second alleged incident, the girl said the defendant had been giving children at the camp turns on his back for piggyback rides.

"Every time I slipped off, he would push me back on and put his fingers up my bottom," she said.

She said it made her feel bad and eventually she left the area.

On cross-examination, Ms Christopher asked the 11-year-old if the children had occasionally played a `Jerry Springer' game at the camp.

The girl said they had played that game and one child would be Jerry while others would be the audience or guests.

"We were playing and saying all this stuff - this and that," she said. But she denied that the children had been reprimanded for playing the game. "I don't think we did," she said. "It was playtime."

Ms Christopher also asked the girl if she had discussed the defendant with her friends - some of whom are also alleged victims.

While the girl originally said she had not, when shown a statement she made to Police, she admitted that she had discussed the defendant with two other girls.

Ms Christopher also established that the accused man did not touch the 11-year-old girl under her underwear during the alleged piggyback incident.