CRIMINAL DIVISION
ON APPEAL FROM THE CROWN COURT AT SOUTHAMPTON
(MR RECORDER JAMES WATSON KC) [44BB0552020]
The Strand London WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
LORD JUSTICE HOLGATE
MR JUSTICE BRYAN
MRS JUSTICE THORNTON
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REX |
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PAUL WRIGHT |
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Lower Ground Floor, 46 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JE
Tel No: 020 7404 1400; Email: rcj@epiqglobal.co.uk (Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
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Crown Copyright ©
LORD JUSTICE HOLGATE: I shall ask Mr Justice Bryan to give the judgment of the court.
MR JUSTICE BRYAN:
"[Ms N] describes how you leant over and reached around the waist of [C], that you had your hands on her torso, that you were both tickling and touching, and that your hands were getting: 'close to her breasts'.
She does not say you put your hands on her breasts but it is quite clear from her evidence that that was the direction of travel and conveyed the intent behind your actions, the sexual intent, which underlies the jury's verdict. Sadly for [Ms N] could not stay. She was called away to help an elderly relative and she only had time as she left to ask Mr [D] to: 'keep an eye' on things in the pool. Mr [D] then gave evidence and described a period of about ten minutes, in his estimation, in which he watched the interactions in the pool. Again, interactions which clearly caused him explicit unease and discomfort and no doubt regret that he did not decide to intervene earlier. He described how you pulled [C] up, you grabbed her from behind, that you bounced her up and down on your lap, both facing towards you and, as he described it: 'the other way'. This would have been lap to lap contact, both in bathing suits. This was a set of movements which he described with his hands and in gestures from the witness box. It was clear that you bounced [C] up and down in what to some might have appeared, superficially, to be a playful manner but in fact had, again, a sexual intent, and, as I repeat, brought [C] into contact lap to lap with you on a number of occasions. You: 'pulled her up and against him'. He said that: '[C] was trying to push away'. But you were pulling her back. Every time she pulled away you would pull her back to your body, and he described other antics, as I will describe it, in the swimming pool, which occurred before he decided, Mr [D] that is, that enough was enough and he intervened. It was only his intervention and his order that you got out of his pool immediately which brought the incident to an end.
I pause simply to pass comment that clearly there was no direct touching of naked areas but the context in which contact took place repeatedly over a period of ten minutes when you were both in swimming costumes is rather more direct in terms of intimacy than might have occurred in other contexts.
Secondly, it was not a brief single form of physical contact, nor was it simply once or twice. It was an extended period of physical contact, as I have stated, over at least ten minutes while
Mr [D] was watching, ignoring the period that [Ms N] described earlier.
Thirdly, I draw attention to the fact, because I must have regard to both harm and the risk of harm, that this activity was only cut short, and your intentions were only thwarted and brought to an end, by Mr [D's] intervention."