September 8, 2021 11.46 am This story is over 30 months old

Teacher accused of sexually assaulting girls shared taxi for ‘their safety’

He denied two charges of sexual assault
Bourne Grammar School. | Photo: Terry Harris

A Grammar School teacher accused of sexually assaulting two teenagers in the back of a taxi told a jury that he did nothing improper.

Adam Binns, a PE teacher at Bourne Grammar School, told the jury at Lincoln Crown Court he left the Late Bar in Bourne at around 2.30am and was planning to get a taxi home when he noticed the two girls and one of their friends at the bottom of the steps leading from the bar.

“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 is 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.

He told the jury that he was initially a teaching assistant at Bourne Grammar School but subsequently qualified as a teacher. Binns said he was spoken to by a senior member of staff after a complaint was made against him in January 2018 and he has since been suspended from his job.

Adam Binns, 31, of Dorchester Avenue, Bourne, denies two charges of sexual assault alleged to have occurred on December 16, 2017.