The colleague of a former office manager accused of sexually molesting a much younger employee told a court she never saw anything “strange” in her boss’s interaction with his alleged victim.The woman appeared as a defence witness at the Magistrates’ Court trial of Mr Y, 59, who is accused of eight counts of sexual assault between February 15 and June 11, 2009.Defence lawyer Shade Subair asked her on Friday if she ever saw any interaction between Mr Y and the complainant, Mr X. The witness, Ms A, said: “Yes.”Ms Subair asked if she’d ever made any observations as to the nature of that interaction. The woman replied: “No.”Asked if she saw “anything strange” about their interaction, she repeated: “No.”She added that temporary workers sometimes got “antsy” if they were given a task they didn’t want to do and that Mr X fell into that category “on some occasions”.The witness said Mr Y was her immediate boss and he asked her to oversee Mr X’s work, making her his direct supervisor.“At times, [Mr X] came in late or whatever time he felt like it,” she said. “That would happen, but he was not the only one.”Ms A described how Mr X’s employment at the office was terminated after he came in at 11am one morning, when he should have started at 8.30am.The woman said she conveyed a message to him from Mr Y and “that was the end of that”.Under cross-examination by prosecutor Nicole Smith, Ms A said she respected Mr Y, adding: “He never treated me bad.”She agreed Mr Y was an easy person to talk to and would always give staff five minutes of his time to listen to their problems.“I don’t care what he was doing, he gave you his time. I can’t say anything against him. If you had a problem and you came in in the morning, he had an open door.“He would listen. He didn’t get in my personal issues on the outside. He would sit there and be a sounding board. If you walked in his office and talked to him, you would not hear it outside the office.”The trial previously heard allegations from Mr X, who was 19 when he began work at the office, that he was sexually assaulted at his home, in his manager’s office and at a guest house by Mr Y.Ms Smith asked Ms A if she was aware that Mr X from time to time was called into Mr Y’s office by Mr Y.The witness replied: “Several times. So was the other [temporary] staff. I can’t tell you anything. You are trying to get me to say something that’s not true.”She agreed with Ms Smith that she wasn’t privy to what they discussed or what they did in Mr Y’s office.A male colleague also appeared as a defence witness at yesterday’s hearing, when the defence closed its case.The trial was adjourned until next month, when Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo will deliver his verdict.Mr Y denies all the charges against him. Neither he, 22-year-old Mr X or any of the parties in the case can be named for legal reasons.