A Shepperton swimming instructor has been found guilty of carrying out sex attacks at a swimming pool on two of his eight-year-old pupils.

Ross Sweet, 24, molested the two young girls twice on separate occasions at a swimming pool in Staines.

He touched one girl between the legs and on the bottom 13 or 14 times, Guildford Crown Court was told.

The other victim told police that Sweet asked her to lie down on a bench to demonstrate a swimming stroke and then touched her over and under her swimsuit.

One of the girls said in a police interview they were asked to dance like the pop group The Cheeky Girls.

Eloise Marshall, prosecuting, told the court one girl was asked to do pelvic thrusts to demonstrate 'butterfly legs' while facing the defendant.

The girl went home and told her mother.

A receptionist at the swimming pool in Staines said she saw the defendant checking around to make sure nobody was watching.

Sweet was arrested and interviewed but claimed that he did not touch any of the girls other than to help them on and off the bench.

When asked if he could have indecently touched the girls by accident Sweet told the court "it is a possibility".

Miss Marshall asked Sweet: "One girl said you touched her 13 or 14 times. It would be impossible for that to be an accident wouldn't it Mr Sweet?"

Joseph Stone, defending, said: "The nature of the job opens you up to allegations.

"When teaching 8,000 people a year, two isn't that many in the round."

Sweet, from Linden Way, Shepperton, was convicted on Thursday (September 7) of four counts of sexual assault on a child between May and September 2004.

He has been suspended from working as a swimming teacher since September 2004, and will be sentenced on September 29.