By Sarah McPhee
An “extremely detailed” diary entry found by a schoolgirl’s suspicious parents led police to suspect a Sydney English teacher had committed sex offences against multiple female students over two decades, a court has heard.
Vasilious Kafataris, 55, has pleaded not guilty in Parramatta District Court to 17 charges relating to four complainants, aged between 15 and 17, including sexual touching, assault and sexual intercourse with a person under 18 who was under his care at the time.
Former English teacher Vasilious Kafataris leaves Parramatta District Court on the first day of his trial.Credit: AAP/Miklos Bolza
In her opening address to the jury on Monday, prosecutor Georgina Namat said the Crown would be calling former students and teachers to give evidence about Kafataris’ alleged tendency to have a sexual interest in female students at high schools where he worked and to act on that interest.
She said Kafataris worked at three different high schools in Sydney’s west and south-west between 2000 and 2021, allegedly grooming students and engaging in sexual conduct “with or towards them”.
Namat said the Crown case started with an “extremely detailed diary entry which describes sexual activity” between the accused and a 17-year-old student, discovered by the girl’s parents in April 2021.
The Crown alleges Kafataris would speak to the girl on the phone outside of school hours, compliment her appearance, pick her up and take her back to his Bankstown unit where they allegedly kissed and engaged in sexual intercourse.
Namat expects the jury to view CCTV of the girl travelling to Bankstown train station to meet the teacher, including footage of them kissing, despite the teenager having told her parents she was “going to the library to study”.
“[The complainant’s] parents started to become suspicious, so they checked her Opal card history,” the prosecutor said.
She said the girl’s mother found her daughter’s diary and read it, and then confronted the teenager, who said she had “been in a relationship” with Kafataris since February 2021, and was upset that “he might go to jail and have no job”.
The girl allegedly warned Kafataris her parents had found out, and was told by him to deny it.
The prosecutor said the teenager’s parents “didn’t believe her” so they took her to see the principal and deputy principal, who encouraged them to report the matter to police.
Namat said the girl initially claimed in a statement the diary entry was a “manifestation of her obsession with the accused”, but a week later in a recorded interview claimed there was sexual activity, and told a different deputy principal the accused was her “boyfriend, that they were sexually intimate, and that she loved him”.
On May 6, 2021, Kafataris was arrested at his unit in Bankstown where police allegedly located a photograph of the girl on his bedside table, a school skirt in his bedroom, a vibrator, and a laptop.
The prosecutor said Kafataris was engaging in sexual activity with other students who he would ring after school hours, give gifts, write poetry and compliment.
She said Kafataris made another complainant lunch every day and would place it on her desk, saying, “this is for you, nobody else”.
The prosecutor said the Department of Education requested an interview with the girl and the accused called the complainant and said, “you need to help me, don’t do this interview”.
Regarding the third complainant, Kafataris told the girl they were “reincarnated to be together” and bought her a card and necklace for her 16th birthday, the prosecutor said.
The Crown claims Kafataris would comment on the appearance of the fourth and final complainant, a year 11 student, telling her, “your uniform fits your curves, thighs and legs really good”.
The prosecutor said the proposed tendency evidence would include Kafataris engaging in a “three-way kiss” with a student at a pub, telling a girl about a “sexual dream” he had about her, commenting that a student was cute and pretty, rubbing her back and hugging her.
Kafataris’ barrister Rory McCrudden chose not to give an opening address. The trial, which is estimated to run for five weeks, continues before Judge Craig Everson.
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