A 12-year-old girl hit a man with her lacrosse stick after he grabbed her in an alleyway in Berkhamsted.
The youngster was on her way back to Berkhamsted School after a PE lesson on the school playing fields when a man took hold of her.
He swung her round but she hit him with her stick and sprinted back to the school where she reported what had happened, St Albans Crown Court was told on Tuesday.
Isabel Delamere, for the Crown Prosecution Service, told the jury of nine women and three men: “The pitch was at the far end of the fields and she had put the equipment away in the pavilion.
“She was the last to leave and headed towards the school. A man came towards her with his head down, he was hunched over and his hands were behind his back.
“They passed and he grabbed hold of her, spun her round and shook her saying: ‘Come with me’. She hit him with a lacrosse stick and sprinted off.”
The girl reported what happened to the school principal, describing the man as aged 60 to 65, with glasses.
Police arrested Kieron Rogers, 18 days later at his home in Lower Kings Road, Berkhamsted. When questioned at Hemel police station the 58-year-old said he lived alone and suffered from hypertension. He said he had not left the house on the day the girl was grabbed and said he couldn’t have gone to the alleyway because of his medical condition.
He denies attempting to grab and take a child on March 13 last year.