Show caption Carolyn Keeling leaves Gloucester crown court after the first day of her trial. She is accused of abusing the boy between 1993 and 1996. Photograph: Picasa/John Hawkins UK news Female tutor ‘sexually abused boy during lessons at his home’ Court told ‘hippy-like’ Carolyn Keeling had sex with 13-year-old at home and abused him on nature walks and horse rides Steven Morris and agency @stevenmorris20 Mon 7 Sep 2015 10.41 EDT Share on Facebook

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A “hippy-like” female tutor sexually abused a boy from when he was 13 years old for two years at his home and during nature walks and horse rides, a court has heard.



Carolyn Keeling, now 64, allegedly smoked cannabis and drank wine while teaching the boy, whom she is said to have abused between 1993 and 1996.

Gloucester crown court heard that Keeling stripped down to her underwear to sunbathe during an outdoor lesson at the boy’s home.

She started touching the teenager through his shorts before they had sex with a condom Keeling provided, the jury was told.

The incident was allegedly the start of abuse that lasted two years and involved Keeling assaulting the boy at least 100 times.

Prosecuting, Ed Burgess said the boy disclosed the alleged abuse to his mother in 2012, after reading of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

He reported it to police in April 2014 and Keeling, from the village of Taynton, near Gloucester, was charged with six counts of indecent assault. She denies the charges.

Burgess said the alleged victim, now a father in his 30s, called Keeling “Mrs K”. The prosecutor said: “He described her as being hippy-like in her mannerisms, in the way she behaved and dressed. He thought she was rather cool.”

He was “a prematurely mature boy physically”, the court heard. Burgess continued: “He talks about his hormones raging and he wasn’t going to turn down what she was offering. At the time he didn’t see it as abuse, he rather enjoyed it. It was only later that he came to understand it as the sexual abuse that it was.”

The court heard Keeling was so trusted by the boy’s family that she was given a key to their home and let herself in to give him lessons. She would often go into the boy’s bedroom – where he would sleep naked – and wake him up by getting into bed with him, it is alleged.

Keeling, a keen horse rider, would also take the boy on nature walks and rides as part of his “rural sciences” work. “They went out riding, dismounted from the horses and had sexual intercourse against a tree on one occasion,” Burgess said.

Her alleged abuse halted when the boy stopped his education at the age of 15 and left home to work.

The boy contacted Keeling when he was in his 20s to ask for a reference for a job and the pair twice met to have sex, Burgess added. But she told him it “didn’t feel right”, the jury was told. He thought it was because he was no longer a child and decided that she was a paedophile.

He told his mother that he had been in a sexual relationship with Keeling in 2012, when the Jimmy Savile scandal was “all over the news”. Two years later he contacted a sexual health centre and asked for the abuse to be reported to police.

In a police interview, Keeling described the boy as intelligent and bright and said she would let herself into his family home with a key. She told officers the boy slept naked and she would sometimes go into his bedroom to wake him up for lessons.

“She said there may have been some unintentional contact with his bottom but nothing more than that,” Burgess told the jury.

Keeling insisted she had never smoked cannabis with the boy and only drank “a sip” of champagne with him on one occasion, when he stole a bottle from his mother’s bedroom.

She told officers she had a degree in personal, social, health and economic education and would talk of personal sexual experiences to teach pupils. After the allegations were revealed, she described herself as “gobsmacked”, Burgess said.