September 8, 2021 5.07 pm This story is over 30 months old

Lincolnshire PE teacher cleared of teenage sexual assault charges

The jury took less than an hour to reach their verdict
Bourne Grammar School. | Photo: Terry Harris

A grammar school teacher accused of sexually assaulting two teenagers in the back of a taxi was cleared by a jury of all charges against him.

Adam Binns, who taught PE at Bourne Grammar School, was alleged to have groped the two girls after they agreed to share the taxi with him at the end of a night out.

One of the girls claimed that earlier in the evening Binns approached her as she waited at the bar to buy a drink and said: “You’re going to make me lose my job.”

The girl said that she was groped during the brief taxi journey from Bourne town centre with Binns putting his hand up her dress and into her pants.

Her friend, who sat on the other side of Binns on the back seat, said she was also groped when Binns put his hand down her jeans.

Binns admitted to the jury at Lincoln Crown Court that he got into the taxi with a girl sitting either side of him on the back seat but he denied anything improper happened during the journey.

“It was the first time I came into contact with them. As I came out I pretty much bumped into them.”

He said he spoke to the girls who told him they were going to walk home.

“I said it’s cold. It’s dark. The direction they were going was the same direction I was going. I said that I was getting a taxi that way.

“It was purely for safety that I suggested a taxi.”

He said the girls initially declined his offer but approached him again while he was waiting for a taxi and agreed to share the journey.

One of the girls sat in the front alongside the driver while another went into the back seat.

Binns said he also sat on the back seat and moments later the third girl also got into the back leaving himself between the teenagers.

He told the jury that the two incidents he was accused of did not happen.

“There was no physical contact with them at all. I said nothing during the journey. It took 50 seconds to a minute.”

He was asked “Did anything untoward happen in that time?” and responded “Nothing”.

Binns said he paid the taxi driver £5 and asked him to wait while he left the vehicle to speak to the girls again, but the taxi then drove away and he walked home.

Adam Binns, 31, of Dorchester Avenue, Bourne, denied two charges of sexual assault alleged to have occurred on December 16, 2017. The jury took less than an hour to return verdicts of not guilty on each charge.