A school teacher facing two charges of sexual assault involving female students has two weeks to wait for a verdict.

Magistrate Edward King yesterday said he would announce his decision on the teacher's guilt or innocence on September 26, after hearing closing arguments from prosecutor Phillip Storr and defence lawyer Richard Hector.

The teacher, who along with the complainants in the case cannot be named, is accused of touching two girls on the breasts during separate incidents in 1996 and 1989.

The 1996 assault is alleged to have taken place in the teacher's classroom while the girl was leaning over his desk to get help with a problem. According to the girl, the teacher put his hand inside her shirt and grabbed her necklace brushing his fingers across her breasts. The girl said she did not call out or report the incident at first because she, "didn't believe it could have been intentional.'' The 1989 assault is alleged to have taken place in the teacher's car.

According to the girl, who was a student at the time, she accepted a lift from the teacher after getting a flat tyre on her way back to school with her lunch which she had bought at a nearby shop.

She said the teacher pulled off the road and parked the car, ostensibly so they could eat lunch in pleasant surroundings. The girl claims the teacher put his hand inside her shirt and squeezed her breast saying, "you've got nice tits.'' In their submissions at the end of the trial both counsel spent most of their time reviewing the credibility of the evidence surrounding the alleged incident in the parking lot.

Mr. Hector said the girl waited over eight years to make a complaint and did so only after being prompted by a counsellor looking into other matters involving the teacher. He was originally charged with seven offences. In addition to the two sexual assault charges, he faced five counts of intruding on the privacy of girls in a manner likely to insult, alarm or offend them.

The intrusion charges were dropped for a variety of legal reasons. All the charges apparently stem from reports of improper behaviour by the teacher, originating from three girls in his class.

According to the girl who was allegedly assaulted in the parking lot, she told no one about the 1989 incident until last year, when approached by the counsellor.

"One can reasonably infer,'' Mr. Hector told the Magistrate, "the counsellor, having taken the trouble to find the girl, persuaded her to make a complaint which is tailor-made...it may be the counsellor believed he had acted improperly to other students and she might have pleaded with the girl...to run him to ground so he wouldn't do this to others.'' Earlier Mr. Storr described the girl as a witness of truth, saying despite exhaustive cross examination by Mr. Hector in which she was, "several times reduced to tears,'' and "pressed to the point where she might have broken down,'' she stuck to her story.