A court has seen a video of a man telling the police he was sexually abused by a teacher at his Mosque in Oldham while he was at primary school.

Hafiz Fazal is on trial at the Lowry Theatre in Salford, operating as a nightingale court during the pandemic, where he faces 17 sexual offences against three victims.

The 66-year-old faces the charges from his time as a teacher between February 1993 and when he left the role in August 1996.

Against the first complainant, a boy at the time, he is said to have carried out multiple indecent assaults.

He faces allegations that he raped the second victim, also a boy at the time, more than 50 times and faces a single charge of indecent assault upon a female victim who was under 16 at the time.

And yesterday the jury was shown the police interview of the first complainant.

He revealed he had come forward after hearing about an inquiry into child abuse which he been ignored, and following this had decided to come to the police in 2018.

He said: “I was sexually abused, that is the word for it.

“When I came to the mosque one day, we had this new teacher.

“He took me over and sat me down and asked me my name.

“I was a very timid child.

“He was just smiling as he put his arm around me.

“I did not know how to feel.”

He said nothing sexual occurred then but he felt “very nervous.”

But he said at a later date he “started touching me on the body around my chest, he started squeezing my chest.”

He said this developed, and on later occasions he touched him in other sexual ways but he was never penetrated in any way.

He told the police the abuse ended when Fazal left the mosque.

The man said his cousin had told him the teacher, who they all called Godzilla, had now left.

He said years later he was in contact with Fazal and arranged to confront him.

He claims Fazal admitted the abuse and apologised and said he had been “led astray by the devil.”

When he opened the case, prosecutor Christopher Tehrani QC said Fazal had denied any wrongdoing in relation to the second and third complainants when interviewed by police, but became emotional and admitted taking the first complainant into his office, pulling his trousers down and thrusting his body onto his leg.

But he said he pulled the boy’s trousers back up and then told him to leave the office.

He had also told officers he was “not sexually attracted to children” and “the devil must have led him astray.”

Fazal, of New Earth Street in Oldham, denies the charges against him.

The trial, before judge Mark Ford QC, continues.