A LEARNER driver who could not afford her lessons claimed that driving instructor Stephen Cooney told her he would write-off the debt if she had sex with him.

She told a jury yesterday that 51-year-old Mr Cooney made the offer as they returned to Teesside from yet another failed test in Whitby, North Yorkshire.

Recalling the trip across the moors, she told the jury: "He said if I pulled over in the layby and had sex with him, I didn't need to pay him. I just said 'no thank-you, Steve'."

The woman is one of three learner drivers who have given evidence at Teesside Crown Court, and who claim they were indecently assaulted by Mr Cooney in his car. One of the women told how she was left in tears when Mr Cooney forced her hand onto his groin to touch a 12in carrot hidden in his trousers during a lesson in April 2003.

He was first interviewed by police the previous year after an 18-year-old student complained that he grabbed her breast outside her Teesside home in the September.

The woman who claims he offered to write off her £80 driving lesson bill in exchange for sex told the jury yesterday that he groped her breasts in lessons between August 2005 and February last year. She finally told police about the alleged assaults after her boyfriend discovered she was being taken to a small claims court by Mr Cooney to retrieve the money. Under cross-examination from defence barrister Christine Egerton, the woman denied she made up the allegation because she wanted revenge for the court case.

The woman told the jury Mr Cooney showed her naked photographs of himself, and added: "I felt physically sick and said 'I don't want to see them' and pushed them away."

Mr Cooney told the court that other nude photographs found by police in the glovebox of his Vauxhall Corsa were "practice" pictures. He had received a digital camera for his 50th birthday from his partner last October and took close-up snaps of his penis to test it out.

"I was trying close-up photography," he told the jury. "Once you have taken the photos you analyse them not so much for the subject, but the quality."

Mr Cooney, of Ronaldshay Terrace, Marske, east Cleveland, denied he planned to show them to his pupils and hid the pictures in his car so his partner did not see them.

He denies two indecent assaults and three sexual assaults. The jury is expected to retire today to consider its verdict.

Mr Cooney admitted putting a carrot in his pocket and telling his pupil her perfectly-executed manoeuvre had given him an erection, but said he did not make her touch him after pointing out the bulge.

"I admit it was unprofessional, stupid, and I regret doing it," he said. "I just thought maybe I would play a practical joke, but obviously it was stupid.