Admits He ‘Probably’ Did Touch Girl’s Breasts by Accident : Accused Molester Greenup Tells His Side

Testifying in his own defense at his molestation trial, Campbell Hugh Greenup acknowledged Wednesday that he “probably” did touch the breasts of one 9-year-old girl on one occasion, but said he did so by accident while he was lifting the child onto his lap.

“I probably did touch (her) breasts,” Greenup said during a sometimes testy exchange with the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth R. Freeman, “but I don’t remember doing it.”

It was the third day on the stand for Greenup, 59, who is accused of fondling eight female students at his small Northridge private elementary school over a five-year period. The school closed two months after his arrest in April, 1984.

Although he “may have” reached under some pupils’ blouses to scratch their bare backs and does remember kissing children on the neck, Greenup emphatically denied that he had ever stuck his hands in any child’s pants.

Earlier, under questioning by Deputy Public Defender Henry J. Hall, the white-haired defendant told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury that he often had younger children sit on his lap out of “love for them, love for me.”

Asked by Freeman to explain that phrase, Greenup said “proximity” enabled the children to associate “learning to read with support, sympathy, friendliness and love.”

While he also benefited from the “exchange of love and good feeling due to proximity and due to touch,” the defendant said, he was never sexually aroused.

When he referred to “love,” Greenup said at another point, “I probably mean . . . I like that youngster and that youngster likes me. . . .

“I wouldn’t doubt sexual arousal comes to your mind,” he told Freeman in a sarcastic tone. “It doesn’t to mine.”

Greenup has contended since his arrest--and reiterated Wednesday--that he was a victim of “hysteria” inspired by the McMartin Pre-School case, which arose in March, 1984. In his cross-examination, however, Freeman concentrated much of his questioning on five allegations of molestation during 1979 and 1980 involving four girls.

Greenup has also maintained that the case was initiated by a couple who owed nearly $5,000 in tuition and didn’t want to perform services for him in lieu of paying their bill.

“You’re saying that because they didn’t want to pay, they talked their daughter into making these charges against you?” Freeman asked in an incredulous voice.

In response, the defendant said he believed the parents’ financial difficulties caused them to “refrain from critically thinking about” the allegations made by their children and prevented them from “taking an impartial attitude.”

Cross-examination of Greenup, the 112th witness, was scheduled to resume today. The trial, before Judge David A. Horowitz, is now in its fourth month.