Former OCAD photography instructor Keesic Douglas told a Toronto jury Monday that he “sensually massaged” a student’s back in December 2013 but denies sexually assaulting her in a darkroom at the downtown art school.

The 45-year-old said he made several moves on the young woman that day because she had been hitting on him in the previous weeks and months.

“I thought that she was attracted to me,” the celebrated Ojibway artist, videographer and photographer testified in Superior Court.

The Rama First Nation artist has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. Douglas was 40, the student 21 at the time of the alleged incident.

His former student, who testified Friday, denied there was any “miscommunication” or that it was possible he “misread the signs,” and said he groped her breasts, thighs and crotch in the darkroom where she had gone to watch him work.

Her identity is covered by a publication ban because she is alleging a sexual assault occurred.

Douglas testified Monday that the only touching that occurred in the darkroom was when he massaged her lower back for about 15 seconds at her request, after she spurned his attempt to move in for a kiss and turned down his offer to photograph her naked.

He told court that he felt the woman had been flirting with him for months, looking at him with “piercing direct eyes” and commenting on his tight-fitting jeans, leaving him feeling “objectified” but also flattered.

When she joined him in the OCAD darkroom to watch him make prints for an upcoming exhibition, Douglas said she told him she always wanted “to have sex in the OCAD darkrooms, but I haven’t been able to find anyone to have sex with me here.”

“What was your initial reaction to that?” asked defence lawyer Luka Rados.

“I thought it was a proposition, not to … actually have sex in the darkroom, but I believe that she wanted something to happen between us.”

Douglas added that for months “it seemed to have been building to this with the flirtations, sexual overtones.” But Douglas said when he moved in to kiss her, she pulled back and said his first name three times with “a very flat tone to it,” which left him confused.

When he indicated his back needed stretching, Douglas said the woman told him he should have a massage. He suggested giving her one “and she said, ‘How ’bout?’”

He took that as “my cue” and began “sensually massaging” her lower back for about 15 seconds until she told him to stop, “and the second she said that my hands came straight off her back,” he said, holding up both his hands.

“It was like a 180-degree shift in the tone and the mood in the room, it was just different. I was trying to figure out what just happened and I was embarrassed: ‘Oh, this person just rejected me.’”

As they left the darkroom, Douglas said she yelled, “‘Keesic, don’t touch me’ or something like that … it was a shock to my ears.”

In an email exchange that followed, Douglas said he wanted to “clear the air” and when she indicated “Everything is cool,” he wrote: “And here I was starting to hunt for a new job.”

During cross-examination, Crown attorney Dave Mitchell accused Douglas of fabricating “the supposed back massage.”

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“You’re trying to minimize what really happened, which was groping her breasts, thighs, crotch area,” Mitchell stated.

Douglas denied that was the case.

The trial resumes in front of a jury Thursday.