A science teacher accused of grooming and raping his student called her his “girlfriend” and claimed it was “consenting at all times”, a court heard.
Darlington Nuwertey, 32, is accused of repeatedly taking advantage of the pupil after meeting her while he was a teacher at Oasis Academy Silvertown in Newham, east London.
He is charged with nine counts of rape and one count of being an adult who abused a position of trust by engaging in sexual activity with a girl aged 16 or above.
On Thursday at Snaresbrook Crown Court, Nuwertey told jurors the pair were in a “loving and consensual relationship” and said he believed she was 18.
During his testimony, he said they would text often over Telegram and Snapchat with disappearing messages and claimed there was no sexual contact while he was working at the school with her.
“She was hiding it from her parents, I was hiding it from my wife, it was mutual,” Nuwertey said.
He claimed that after teaching her, the girl contacted him to say she was actually 18 and her parents had “altered her birth certificate”.
Prosecuting, Richard Barrington asked: “You had been her teacher only months before this and you were now willing to enter a sexual relationship with her?”
Nuwertey said: “(She) provided a certain kind of excitement and in that period of my life where I should have known what I was doing, I should have stood by my wife, I should have spoken to someone about what I was going through emotionally, I didn’t do that.”
He added: “I didn’t stop to consider that a few months ago that she was my student.”
The former teacher originally told police that he only had a “professional relationship” with the girl, which he now admits was a lie, the court heard.
The schoolgirl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she was 15 and about to turn 16 when she became aware of Nuwertey’s unwanted attention.
She has described multiple instances of rape, including while she was still his student at school.
On one occasion, Nuwertey is accused of pinning the girl against the classroom wall and kissing her while “forcefully grabbing her breasts over her school uniform”.
Jurors previously heard Nuwertey was “nearly caught red-handed” when another teacher came into the classroom, but he “quickly ran to the front of the class and pretended nothing untoward was going on”.
Nuwertey is also accused of raping the girl in a storeroom at the school.
Police found Nuwertey’s semen in that storeroom, which he claimed was because he masturbated in there, the court heard.
The girl told the court on Wednesday that Nuwertey had said he wanted her to carry his baby, called her his “slave” and told her that “no one will ever love me like he did”.
Nuwertey told jurors that he would pick the girl up from school, and that she had initiated the first sexual contact, at his house.
He added that he “didn’t know” that as her “former teacher” the relationship would be illegal, and denied manipulating the girl.
Mr Barrington said: “This wasn’t a romantic relationship, this was the product of you having successfully groomed a schoolgirl.”
Nuwertey, of Bexleyheath, south London, denies the charges.
The trial continues.