The West Kowloon Court heard the string of attacks allegedly took place on May 2 last year in a classroom full of students at a tutorial school in Cheung Sha Wan.

In a recorded interview played in court, the boy told a social worker that Chau began attacking him after a phone call with his father, who revealed that he did not complete his homework and scored poorly in dictation at school.

The boy said Chau hit his forearms with a plastic binder and his head with a thick book, punched his left cheek and pinched his left earlobe.

“You did not submit your homework,” the boy claimed Chau said three times.

He also accused her of pushing his head to the table five or six times, before spraying cleaning detergent onto his hair, wiping his head with three dirty towels and kicking him to the floor.

The boy said he was “too scared” to say anything during the alleged attack, except when the teacher asked him: “I’m crazy, do you know that?”

“I said, ‘I know,’” the boy told the social worker.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Anna Ho in court, the boy testified via television link that he did not finish his homework because he did not know how to and did not want to.

“Can I say it was not your first time?” Ho asked.

“You can,” the boy replied in a small voice, his cheeks flamed red.

Ho later put it to the boy that he had been lying because he did not want to go to the tutorial.

The boy replied: “Yes.”

But when Ho then suggested her client had never hit him, he replied: “Did.”

The three-day trial continues before Magistrate Matthew Leung Man-liang.