A GYMNASTICS coach raped a girl acrobat in a store cupboard and then cut her stomach with a Stanley knife, saying "You're mine", a court was told yesterday.

The woman, now aged 22, said Jack Foster, 62, who ran a club with his wife, Joyce, threatened to slit her throat if she told anybody, and that he raped her during two more coaching sessions before she quit the club.

The girl, who was 15, said he held the blade to her throat and ordered her to take off her costume, before raping her.

The Fosters held training sessions for about 30 youngsters two nights a week at the Thornaby Pavilion, Teesside.

"I was crying, telling him to stop but he was telling me to be quiet," she said.

After he had sex, she said: "He got the Stanley knife and he made a cut on my stomach.

"It was a small cut, a couple of inches long and not very deep. He told me that I was his now. He said: 'You're mine'."

She said he raped her on two other occasions in the cupboard before she resigned from the gym club.

David Brooke, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court: "She became depressed and was self-harming - cutting herself in the same area, almost to obliterate it."

She went to the police last year but Mr Foster denied anything happened.

The girl, who gave evidence by TV link, was asked by Tim Roberts, defending, why she continued to go to the club.

She replied: "I love gymnastics. I was scared to leave because of what he would do."

Mr Foster, of Lumley Road, Redcar, east Cleveland, denies three rapes and two indecent assaults.

The case continues