A shy teenager gave up her hopes of joining the Army after her recruitment officer slapped her on the bottom, pestered her for dates and asked her "inappropriate" personal questions, she told a court.

The woman, who was 17 at the time, claims the sexual attentions of Army recruitment sergeant Edwin Mee - known as Jock - made her feel "very uncomfortable".

He asked her if she was a virgin and waited until her mother had walked out of a meeting room where they were discussing a taster session to start training for the Army.

The alleged incidents happened in the 15 to 20 times that she met him, at first accompanied by her mother, at the recruitment interviews at the Mitcham Barracks army careers and information office in Mitcham Road, Croydon.

Speaking from behind a curtain, the woman, who turns 22 tomorrow, told Southwark Crown Court: "He just smacked my bottom on the way out."

She told the jury that "he did not say anything", adding: "I was just very shocked and a bit overwhelmed. I did not know what to say. I was not expecting that to happen. I was speechless. I did not know what to say."

Mee, 45, allegedly carried out sex attacks on 11 victims as young as 15 while working at an Army careers centre.

The woman said she did not tell her mother about the alleged bottom smack at first because her mother "thought so highly of Jock and always praised him" and she was scared it might damage her application.

The woman claims that Mee, who worked in the Croydon and Cheam regions of south London, pestered her with questions about her personal life, asking her about eight times to go out for a drink and whether her mother would let her stay at his house.

He would also "stare" at her chest during the interviews, she told the court.

She said: "He asked if I would go out for a drink with him. I said 'no, maybe next week' and tried to push it aside.

"He asked if I had a relationship and a boyfriend. He also asked if I was a virgin. I asked 'why are you asking these questions, they are not relevant to my application?'"

On why he asked about her staying at his home, Mee allegedly told her "he would not be able to control himself once he had a drink". She felt he was "very touchy feely with me", she said.

She applied to join the Army in March 2011 but had abandoned the plan by December that year.

She said: "I just stopped training. I felt very uncomfortable about it. My interest was diverted by what I was experiencing - the unprofessionalism.

"It was just not somewhere I wanted to be near."

Mee, a divorced father-of-five, is said to have carried out a series of attacks on women aged from 15 to their early 20s between October 2010 and September 2011.

The woman described herself as a "very shy" 17-year-old who was "still quite young" and would "just make an excuse up" to try and put Mee off.

Mee, formerly of Tavistock Road, Croydon, dressed in a dark suit with a light blue shirt and blue tie and with his grey hair tied in a bun, denies 17 counts of sexual assault, three rapes and one count of assault by penetration.

The woman told the jury she was "110 per cent" certain that Mee had asked about her virginity.

Lisa Wilding, defending, claimed the incidents did not happen and suggested that when Mee found out they shared the same birthday, he only said "make sure you do not drink too much, it will affect your training".

The woman responded sharply: "That is a lie."

Another woman who wanted to join the Army was told by the recruitment sergeant that she had to be "nice" to him, the court heard.

The woman, who had arrived in England from her Sierra Leone homeland in 2007 when she was 19, said Mee told her this in a first job application appointment in 2010.

The woman, who said she had been "inspired" to join the Army by her then-fiance, said Mee littered the meeting with comments about her "boobs", her looks and saying that he "liked her".

He claimed it was "a compliment" but all of it made her feel "uncomfortable," she told London's Southwark Crown Court.

Speaking from behind a curtain, the gently-spoken 27-year-old told the jury: "He told me a little bit about him and his ex-wife. He said that if I help him, he will help me through my application but if I f*** with him..."

She then said "excuse me" to the jury before continuing his sentence adding that he said "he will f*** with me".

She did not understand straightaway what he meant by asking her to be "nice" to him and said she left the appointment feeling "so bad" and "just confused".

Earlier in the interview at Mee's office in Croydon, south London, he had asked her about her background and then asked if she was a prostitute.

She replied "No, I have never been a prostitute in my life".

"He then said to me 'I like your boobs'."

She also recalled that he said "I really like you" and "You are really pretty".

She responded by saying that she "did not like those kinds of words".

She also told the jury that Mee told her to look him in the eyes but this made her uncomfortable because it is a sign of rudeness in her culture.

"I am not comfortable because in our culture, we do not do that," she said.

"I just wanted him to come out plain and not to talk to me in that way."

She said she wanted to get the job and so went back for the next appointment.

When she got back to the home she shared with her sister, who asked about the appointment, she said: "The man is not decent."

By then she had realised that by asking her to be "nice" to him, Mee was asking her to "help him as a woman and to have sex with him", she claimed.

This was not something that she could confide to her sister about, she noted, pointing out that "we have boundaries and we talk but not to that extent".

She also told the court that Mee asked if she was sleeping with her boyfriend - a conversation which she shut down because it made her "embarrassed" and she feared he would not handle her application properly, she claimed.

Of every conversation, she said: "It was just about myself, so I was embarrassed. It was more about myself than the application."