MARIETTA - During a tribunal hearing Thursday, Lassiter High School counselor and assistant girls basketball coach Frank Robinson denied inappropriately touching a 17-year-old female student on Dec. 8.

However, school district investigator Mary Finlayson testified that, in her opinion, Robinson, who has been on paid leave since Dec. 10, is guilty.

"My belief is that Mr. Robinson did grope (the student) in his office and I believe that he did what she said he did."

The all-day hearing took place in the school boardroom on Glover Street and will resume this morning.

Superintendent Fred Sanderson selected school board members Lynnda Crowder-Eagle, Holli Cash and John Abraham to serve on the tribunal panel, which is responsible for determining whether to uphold Sanderson's recommendation to terminate Robinson.

The panel is required to make a recommendation to the Cobb school board within five days after the hearing ends. Woodstock attorney Hugh Dorsey presided as the hearing officer.

Robinson, dressed in a dark suit with a matching bowtie, was represented by attorney Warren C. Fortson of Atlanta. Fortson also represents former North Cobb High School principal Dr. Lawrence Bynum, who was fired in October 2008 following allegations of sexual harassment, and served as the Atlanta City Schools attorney from the 1970s to the 1990s.

In her opening statements, school attorney Nina Gupta of the Marietta law firm Brock, Clay, Calhoun and Rogers laid out the charges against Robinson, stressing his Dec. 19 arrest and sexual assault charge by Cobb County Police.

"Coach Robinson has been arrested for sexual battery, that means that a judge has already determined that there is probable cause - that it is more likely than not that Coach Robinson committed a crime of sexual battery against (the student), " Gupta said.

But Fortson said his client is "innocent of the charges all the way down the line," referring not only to the allegations of inappropriate touching, but also those of another female Lassiter High School student who claims Robinson made sexually suggestive remarks to her. Fortson said Robinson had been counseling for 16 years and there hasn't been a "blemish on his record" until these accusations.

In the audience were several parents, teachers and former teachers from Lassiter. Chris Shaw, Lassiter's principal, sat with Gupta.

For its first witness, the school system called the student, who now attends Pope High School, and requested that she tell her account of what happened the day of the alleged incident.

She said she met with Robinson, her guidance counselor at the time, that afternoon and Robinson helped her with a scheduling change. The student later testified that Robinson had told her she was failing a class. At the end of the meeting, he said, "you owe me," she testified. She said she offered to buy him a teacher gift, but he replied that wasn't what he wanted and put his hand in her lap. She said she stood up and backed away from Robinson, but he continued to touch her inappropriately as she asked him, "What are you doing?" She said Robinson told her to "relax." The student said the entire incident lasted about a "minute or two."

"I was just shocked and stunned, I didn't expect it of him," the student said.

The student also testified that before the day of the alleged attack, Robinson had made several sexually inappropriate comments to her verbally and one written on a pink sticky note that she threw away.

In his cross-examination, Fortson began by reminding the student that she had been sworn in and that if she didn't tell the truth under oath she could be prosecuted.

Fortson asked if the student was upset with Robinson for not getting on the varsity basketball team. The student was said to have wanted on the team, but was unable to attend tryouts and had asked Robinson to put in a good word for her to the varsity coach. Robinson was unable to secure her a spot on the team, but the student testified that she was not upset with him about it.

Fortson's asked the student to recall who she told about Robinson and the incident. He asked the student how she felt when her math teacher, Melanie Nix, went behind her back and told administrators about the incident. She testified that she was upset since she specifically told Nix not to tell until she had a chance to call her mother, who lives out of state, to discuss the situation. The student also testified that she told one of her male friends about what happened with Robinson, and the friend went to Robinson to confront him about the situation.

The male friend later testified that he felt Robinson reacted oddly when he went to the counselor's office to discuss the situation.

"It was like he was caught," he said.

The student said she had been receiving various harassing messages from other Lassiter students via Facebook and text. In the student's final comment to the tribunal, she assured them that she was very upset by the attention she is getting.

"This isn't something I would lie about to get the kind of attention that I'm getting," she said.

Also testifying Thursday was another student, a senior, who claimed Robinson made sexual comments to her during the school year. She said when Robinson began making comments to she shrugged them off because she thought she might be overreacting. But when the other student, a friend, came out with her story about Robinson she said she could no longer hold her tongue.

The district also called the senior's mother, who testified that Robinson called her in seek of support a few days after he was placed on paid leave and specifically directed not to contact any Lassiter students, parents or teachers.

The mother went on to say that she was at first shocked by the allegations against Robinson until she later found out her own daughter had accused Robinson of talking to her in a sexually suggestive manner.

The district investigator and Fortson went back and forth about a polygraph test that she claimed Robinson refused to take. The defense argued that they had emailed with Finlayson and had requested it be administered by an independent polygraph operator, other than someone employed by the district.

Because of time, the defense was allowed to call just one witness on Thursday. Fortson called former Lassiter Principal James Carter, who testified that in his experience with Robinson he had always been professional, personable and very concerned about the welfare of his students.

The hearing will resume today at 9 a.m. The school district is expected to call at least one more witness and the defense is allowed to counter with witnesses of its own.