Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Kyle Daniels
Former swim coach Kyle Daniels has pleaded not guilty to 26 charges, including multiple counts of having sexual intercourse with a child under 10. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
Former swim coach Kyle Daniels has pleaded not guilty to 26 charges, including multiple counts of having sexual intercourse with a child under 10. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

'Why would he do it on purpose?' girl asked after alleged assault by Sydney swim instructor

This article is more than 3 years old

Former Mosman swimming teacher Kyle Daniels is facing a jury trial accused of touching nine of his students on or near their genitals

A young girl who accused her swimming teacher of inappropriately touching her twice asked why anyone would have done so on purpose, a Sydney jury has heard.

During a police interview this year the girl said her former swimming instructor, Kyle James Henk Daniels, “accidentally touched my part you’re not allowed to”.

“Why do you say that?” she was asked. “Because why would he have wanted to do it on purpose?” the girl responded.

Daniels, 22, has pleaded not guilty to 26 charges, including multiple counts of having sexual intercourse with a child under 10 and indecently assaulting a person under 16.

He is accused of touching nine of his students on or near their genitals while instructing them between February 2018 and February 2019 at a Mosman pool.

During her police interview, played in the NSW district court on Monday, the girl – aged under 10 at the time – became visibly upset when questions turned to where Daniels allegedly touched her while guiding her movements in and out of the pool.

She said he was first giving her freestyle lessons and then later corrected her diving when he touched her genitals outside her swimmers on two separate occasions in the same lesson.

She said it made her feel “quite uncomfortable” and she wanted to leave the lesson but did not feel she could with her mother watching her sister in another part of the pool.

In other evidence presented to the court on Monday, the girl said her teacher curled up his finger and pushed it against her private parts when she dived into the pool, but that he may not have noticed because he did not say “sorry”. She completed her following dive on her own because “she didn’t want to be corrected again”.

That evening she wrote a note to her parents saying she didn’t like her swimming lesson because of what happened and was subsequently moved to another teacher.

The trial, before judge Kara Shead, continues.

Most viewed

Most viewed