BRADFORD ELECTRICIAN JAILED AFER GROPING TEENAGERS BREASTS
A drunk who groped a teenagers breasts and left her feeling broken has been locked up for 18 months.Damian Royle denied sexually assaulting his victim, forcing her to give evidence at a trial where he was convicted by a jury.
Jailing him at Bradford Crown Court, Mr Recorder Mark McKone told Royle: The seriousness of the offence means that appropriate punishment can only be immediate custody.
You continue to deny your guilt.
A suspended sentence might have been possible if you had admitted guilt and asked for help.
Royle will now have to register as a sex offender for ten years.
Prosecutor Soheil Khan said Royle, 42, of Willow Close, near Halifax Road, Bradford, had been drinking.
The court heard that Royle put his hand down the teenagers top and touched her naked breasts.
He also put his hand down her trousers, touched her vagina over her underwear, and was kissing her.
She tried to get him to stop by pushing him away and telling him to get off, but he persisted.
In a statement read to the court on her behalf the victim described herself as an emotional wreck and said the experience of the trial had been harrowing.
Referring to Royle, she said: You left me broken.
What you did to me might not have been a big deal to you but to me it was and is constant.
I am no longer the person I was.
She described herself as an emotional wreck and that she had been trapped in my own mind.
Referring to the end of the trial in which Royle had lied, claiming she had made advances towards him, she said: I can barely put into words the feeling when the jury delivered their verdict.
I felt heard.
Believed.
From this day on I will fight to be the best person I can be and keep my head held high.
Mitigating, Eleanor Mitten conceded that Royle had an unenviable record with a previous conviction for burglary dating back to 2012 when he received five years imprisonment but that he had not offended since.
Instead he had been successful in turning his life around after being in and out of prison and had been working as an electrician for ten years.
She said he was in a new relationship with a young child and another on the way with his heavily pregnant partner, who was in court.
She suggested the court could step back from immediate custody as Royle presented a realistic prospect of rehabilitation.
Sentencing Royle, Recorder McKone described the victim as timid and fragile when she gave evidence at the trial and that Royle had lied about his behaviour in interview with the police and in court.
He said: You were drunk when you committed the offence.
It is still having an impact upon her.
She showed great courage in giving evidence [at the trial].
She was determined to stop you doing this to someone else.
