A distressed Sydney swim coach fell to the ground and decried the "disgusting" child abuse allegations levelled against him on the day of his arrest, a jury has been told.
Police arrived at Paul Douglas Frost's home in September 2019 to arrest him over the alleged sexual abuse of 11 students at a swim school in southwest Sydney from 1996 and 2009.
"There were the police ... here was Paul Frost's most unguarded, unprepared moment," defence barrister Ian Neil SC said during closing submissions on Tuesday.
A police officer attending that day said Frost, now 46, dropped to the ground in distress after uttering: "That's disgusting".
Mr Neil told the District Court trial his client consistently maintained this description of the allegations, which include indecently assaulting a child, enticing a child to commit an act of indecency and exposing a child to indecent material.
"People do not ordinarily say the things that Paul Frost is alleged to have said," the barrister said.
"They do not ordinarily do the sorts of things that Paul Frost is alleged to have done. They are disgusting, they are disgusting, just as Paul Frost spontaneously said at the moment he was arrested."
Mr Neil said the swim coach's response was honest and genuine, calling the allegations and their subject matter repugnant.
The jury heard evidence that Frost would openly sit students on his lap, sometimes stroking the hair or their arms.
The Crown's case that the students - 10 male and one female - had been abused at the swim school was inconsistent with evidence given by other parents, coaches and students, including Australian swimming sensation Ian Thorpe, the jury heard.
Thorpe told police in a statement he was not a victim and did not see behaviour other than back or shoulder massages of kids, Mr Neil said.
"I never saw anything that alarmed me. As I said, I thought it was just unusual," the Sydney swim club's president previously told the court.
While conversations about students' genitalia occurred at the swim school, these were instigated by the male students and not by Frost, jurors were told.
Frost argued he was a person of good character who worked hard with his parents and wife to build their family business, and who had taught thousands of children at the swim school.
"From all of those thousands of children and young people with whom and for whom Paul Frost has worked for decades, only 11 now make the complaints," Mr Neil said.
Frost also waived his right to silence and opted to go through four confronting days of cross-examination during which he denied each of the allegations brought against him, the jury was told.
"He did all of that for only one reason, only one, so that you, you the members of the jury, could see and hear him for yourselves, see and hear him tell you that he did not do (these) terrible and awful things," Mr Neil said.
While appearing to be coherent on the surface, jurors would only need to look at the facts to see the Crown's story unravel, the barrister added.
He said accounts favourable to Frost did not corroborate or support any of the allegations made, adding there was a "gaping void right at the heart of the Crown's case".
Although there were 44 charges brought against Frost, the Crown's case involved a total of more than 1700 separate incidents alleged to have occurred at a crowded and confined swimming pool, jurors were told.
"The notion that that could occur ... without anyone ever seeing, hearing, detecting, suspecting or talking about it. That is implausible," Mr Neil argued.
The hearing continues on Wednesday.
