A FORMER teacher is facing years behind bars for repeatedly molesting a schoolgirl. Barry Clark, 61, a leading figure in British fencing who helps pick the British women s team, performed sex acts with the girl in his car. He groped her at her Dagenham

A FORMER teacher is facing years behind bars for repeatedly molesting a schoolgirl.

Barry Clark, 61, a leading figure in British fencing who helps pick the British women's team, performed sex acts with the girl in his car.

He groped her at her Dagenham school and simulated sex with the teenager in his marital bed.

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard the history teacher preyed on the youngster from when she was aged just 12 during a four-year ordeal.

A jury took nine hours to unanimously convict the pervert of eight charges of indecent assault between 1992 and 1996 following a two-week trial.

Remanding him in custody, Judge Simon Freeland QC said Clark's catalogue of sex attacks on the girl represented a 'gross abuse of trust'.

"What makes it worse is that these indecent assaults were committed in the vicinity of locations including the defendant's home," the judge added.

"There can only be one sentence in this case which will be a substantial sentence of custody," Judge Freeland said.

The judge ordered pre-sentence reports on Clark and also a victim impact statement from his victim, now in her mid-20s, who took three days to describe her suffering.

She told jurors that at the time she considered performing sex acts on Clark as 'just a normal thing to do'.

The mum described the number of times she masturbated Clark in his car as 'uncountable'.

The trial heard Clark 'petrified' his victim by suggesting full sex.

Clark declared during one roadside sexual encounter that he wanted to use condoms with the girl who was aged around 12 at the time.

He often assaulted the girl while teaching at a school in Dagenham, the jury heard.

The woman, who cannot be named, said Clark would regularly drive with one hand on the steering wheel with the other groping her breasts.

He also stripped to his underpants and simulated sex with the child in his marital bed.

The teacher was arrested in 2007 when she complained to police but he refused to comment in his interview.

In court, he denied molesting the girl, telling jurors she had had a 'crush' on him.

Clark, of Darsham Close, Felixstowe, was convicted of eight counts of indecent assault.

He was cleared of one count of indecent assault that was charged as a 'specimen count' to represent further occasions on which he molested the girl other than the eight indecent assaults.

Clark will be sentenced on March 12.