Latest Offenders Oxford

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A SHAMED police constable who resigned days before pleading guilty to owning extreme pornography won a Thames Valley Police award for his community work. Craig Finch, 38, was described as a reliable, highly respected and an invaluable colleague when he topped the Oxfordshire category in the forces Community Policing Awards in 2020. The St Aldates police station-based constable was decorated for his work with the citys homeless. He was said to have built up trust with those who feel injustice or have a lack of confidence in the police. The citation was removed from the force's website following his conviction, a spokesman said. Finch, from Banbury, appeared before High Wycombe Magistrates Court today, pleading guilty to a single count of possession of extreme pornographic material. By law, extreme pornography is material that is grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character. It can include videos or images showing acts that threaten a persons life, depictions of rape, sexual acts that involve serious injury, intercourse with a corpse or sexual activity between a person and animal. Court documents show Finch had been charged with possession on November 24 last year in Banbury of an SD memory card containing five videos that portrayed in an explicit and realistic way an act which resulted or was likely to result in serious injury to a persons private parts. Any reasonable person would think that the person in the image was real, the charge added. The offence with which he has been charged carries a maximum sentence of three years imprisonment. A defendant is only placed on the sex offender register if they receive a jail sentence of more than two years. Finch will be sentenced on September 19 at High Wycombe Magistrates Court. Thames Valley Police said the officer had resigned on Wednesday, two days before his court appearance. He had been suspended from duty since November last year. A misconduct hearing was held behind closed doors on Thursday in front of Chief Constable John Campbell. The chief constable found Finch guilty of gross misconduct and would have fired him had the officer not resigned. He will be placed on the National Police Chief Council's barred list. Following Finchs conviction at High Wycombe Magistrates Court, Deputy Chief Constable Jason Hogg said: Whenever an officer is accused of breaking the law we will investigate thoroughly and where evidence is found it will be presented it to the Crown Prosecution Service. It is entirely unacceptable to myself, to the force, as well as to the public for someone who is supposed to uphold the law and protect others, to have committed such an offence and remain an officer.

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A sex offender who amassed a sick collection of more than 150,000 images and videos of children wanted to castrate himself, a court heard.

Judge Nigel Daly was told that James Carvell, 56, had collected the images out of an obsessive compulsion rather than out of a sense of sexual gratification and because struggles in childhood had left him with a deep self-loathing.

He was desperate for help but did not know where to start even to the point he wanted to castrate himself, his barrister Preetika Mathur told Oxford Crown Court on Friday afternoon.

In total, more than 156,000 indecent images of children in categories A to C were discovered both on Carvells digital devices and on papers kept beneath his bed.

The twisted collection amassed over 10 years included sick and violent images involving child victims some involving animals.

Photographs discovered beneath his bed depicted children aged between six and 13 and featured elements of sadism, the court was told.

In total, he had 1,057 images in the most serious category, 847 in the next category down and 155,073 images in category C.

Analysis of his devices showed he had searched for the material, using a special internet browser to try and hide his web history. He had bookmarked websites where indecent images could be found and appeared to have downloaded large numbers of files in one go.

Carvell, who was made a sex offender in 2004 when he was jailed for six months for having indecent images, was also in breach of his sex offender notification requirements. He had failed to tell the police he moved in with a new partner at the start of the pandemic.

Jailing him for 28 months, a visibly disgusted Judge Daly told the defendant: The total number, as you have heard, of the different categories are in excess of 150,000. That is a staggering amount and it represents tens of thousands of children being exploited.

Everyone of those images is an image of a child.

It is almost unbelievable that such images in such quantities can exist and yet, no doubt, what we are looking at over all is but a tip of the iceberg.

Carvell, of no fixed address, admitted breach of his sex offender notification requirements and possession of indecent images of children and extreme pornographic material of people having sex with animals.

He was said to be deeply remorseful and had recognised the impact of his offending on children.

Judge Daly imposed a 10 year sexual harm prevention order.

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This is the first picture of jailed sex offender Willem van der Werf.

The 56-year-old was jailed for more than 12-and-a-half years on Friday for grooming, sexually assaulting and raping a girl in Banbury last spring.

Sending him to prison, Judge Nigel Daly told the Dutchman: What you have done to her is destroy not only her childhood but possibly the rest of her life. You did it for your own sexual gratification. There is no escaping from that.

Werf, formerly of Calthorpe, Banbury, received 12 years and nine months imprisonment. He must serve an extended four years on licence and will remain on the sex offender register for the rest of his life.

Thames Valley Police has now released Werfs custody shot.

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A PEEPING Tom was back breaching a court order limiting his internet use just weeks after he was handed a lifeline by an Oxford judge. Night prowler Carl Ford, 29, was given the sexual harm prevention order in December last year at Chelmsford Crown Court for 17 charges, including going out at night and secretly filming women through their windows. In March, an Oxford judge gave the Didcot man just 14 days imprisonment for breaching that order by failing to register a PlayStation video console, a laptop and memory card with the police. On Wednesday, Ford was back before the same judge who had taken a lenient view in the spring. Prosecutor Alice Aubrey-Fletcher told the court Ford had deleted a dating app, called Badoo, in breach of his sexual harm prevention order and used his flatmates iPad to watch pornography. Judge Michael Gledhill QC heard that an investigator from Thames Valley Polices public protection department, which is responsible for monitoring sex offenders, visited Fords flat on May 25. The defendant was out, but was told about the police visit by his flatmate. Ms Aubrey-Fletcher said: During the visit, the defendants phone was inspected. On the phone was found a photograph of an adult woman in her underwear. The defendant told the investigator the photograph came from a dating app called Badoo. That app had been deleted from the phone, however, in breach of the order. Ford claimed he had deleted the dating app to hide it from his ex-partner as he didnt want it to upset her. He admitted using his flatmates tablet computer, initially claiming he used it to watch Netflix TV shows. However, when he was told the device, which had not been registered with the police, would be analysed by forensic specialists, he confessed to using it to watch pornography online. The pornography was similar in nature to the voyeuristic images that were behind his original offences, the prosecutor said. Mitigating, Derek Barry echoed what he said in his clients defence in March. Ford had a terrible childhood, being physically abused at the hands of his father who was described as a high-risk persistent sexual offender well-known to the police. Ford, of Buckthorn Crescent, Didcot, pleaded guilty to breaching his sexual harm prevention order. He had three previous convictions for breaching the order and was given what the prosecutor termed a lifeline 14 day sentence in March. On Wednesday, Judge Gledhill jailed him for 28 months.

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A paedophiles vast stash of indecent images was discovered when he returned his laptop to a shop in August 2019. Marian Burlan, 58, had a vile child sex abuse image saved as his screensaver, alerting technicians at eFix Computers that there may be other material on the laptop. Another engineer checked the deleted images folder and saw a video of a girl he thought was roughly 10-years-old. Prosecutor Alice Aubrey-Fletcher said Burlans other devices were seized together with notepads that listed websites where indecent images could be found. Police found evidence the images had been accessed since 2008, although the former merchant sailor had only come to the UK from Romania in 2018 in search of better pay. In total, he had around 1,100 images and videos in the very worst category, including one that showed the sezual assault of a child estimated to be three to five years old. There were 46,000 images and videos in category C and 588 in category B. Ms Aubrey-Fletcher said some of the children were in obvious distress. The youngest children in the images were thought to be aged between two and four. A further 33,832 image and video files were found on the devices but not categorised by the specialist officers. Interviewed by the police, Burlan admitted what he had done and said he had looked at sexually-explicit images of adults, children and animals. Sentencing him at Oxford Crown Court on Friday, Judge Maria Lamb said: The author of this pre-sentence report says that the exploitation and abuse of children undertaken to gratify individuals individuals like you - who are often able to detach themselves from ownership of the criminal actions that are directly carried out against those children is a deeply destructive and utterly callous process. I agree wholeheartedly with what the probation officer says about that. In fairness to you, it does appear from what was said to the probation officer during the course of your interview with him that you have a realisation of the gravity of your offending. However, she said she was just persuaded there was a realistic prospect of Burlan being rehabilitated. Judge Lamb sentenced him to 16 months imprisonment suspended for two years with a requirement he complete up to 30 rehabilitation activity requirement days. He must abide by a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and sign on as a sex offender for a decade. The judge ordered he pay 425 in costs. His barrister, Gordana Austin, said her client had spent 25 years in the merchant navy before coming to the UK in 2018. He had worked in various porter roles and odd-jobs. He suffered from a number of health issues. Burlan, of Main Road, Long Hanborough, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to possession of indecent images of children.

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Sick predator Robert Moors, 36, attempted to groom girls as young as eight using social media video app TikTok before moving the conversation to Whatsapp where he asked one about her underwear A creepy predator has been thrown in jail for four years after it emerged he was grooming girls as young as eight via social media app TikTok. Robert Moors, 36, used the China-owned video app to ask one of his two of his victims what underwear she as wearing. The 12-year-old admitted that they were Frozen-themed, and the sick man then asked her to perform sexual acts, Oxford Crown Court heard. And he even dared the girl to tell her brother to expose his genitals for five seconds. Things took an even more sinister turn when the man, who went under the name Goldeneye0073, moved the conversation to WhatsApp. A second victim, who was ten when she was contacted on TikTok by Moors, was asked what she was wearing. He suggested she remove her underwear. The vile messages were discovered when the second girl approached her father 'shaking and crying' and showed him the social media conversation. Moors was arrested two days later, on December 21 last year, and his mobile phone was seized. When it was searched by police experts, the phone was found to contain 95 child sex abuse videos in the worst category, which includes depictions of child rape. There were 75 videos in category B and 65 in category C. The children in the videos were aged between six and 11. He was interviewed twice and answered no comment to all questions asked. Jailing him for four years, Judge Michael Gledhill QC said: "You opened TikTok, you browsed through the material that was openly on view and you selected two girls who happened to be eight and 10-years-old. "You spoke to them directly and you asked them to do sexual things, albeit not the most serious sexual things but we are talking about girls under 10. "Why were you doing it? For your own sexual gratification. Gareth James, mitigating, described the case as a troubling one and acknowledged the custody threshold had been passed. His client had no previous convictions and entered his guilty pleas at the first opportunity. Moors pleaded guilty to inciting a girl under-13 to engage in sexual activity and possession of indecent images of children. He will be on the sex offender register for life and was made subject to a seven-year sexual harm prevention order designed to limit his unfettered access to children and the internet.

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A teenager who woke up to find a man raping her said she hoped he rots in prison after he put her through months of misery. Jacquani Phillips, 21, filmed part of his abuse of the woman who was then still under-18 during the ordeal near Bicester on October 10 last year. His victim, who was in court on Tuesday afternoon to see him jailed for eight-and-a-half years, said her life had stopped in the six months after he raped her and as the case proceeded for trial. In her impact statement, read to Oxford Crown Court, she told her abuser: Youre disgusting. A horrible piece of work and I honestly hope you rot in prison. Prosecutor Jonathan Stone told the court that the victim had taken medication on the night of the rape, which put her into a deep sleep. She woke up three times in the night to find that Phillips was raping her in the bed. Despite the effects of the medication, she elbowed him and told him no making it clear she did not want to have sex with him. Police forensic experts later found videos on his phone taken in the early hours of the night of the sexual assaults, which appeared to show him molesting an unresponsive woman. There was also an explicit photograph. Jailing him for eight-and-a-half years, of which he will serve at least two-thirds in custody, Judge Nigel Daly told Phillips: I have considered whether life imprisonment is appropriate in this case. It is not. I have considered the dangerousness provisions [where Phillips would receive an extended licence period] and whether or not they apply in this case. I have considered that they do not. A restraining order bans him from contacting his victim indefinitely and he will remain a sex offender for the rest of his life. Lucy Tapper, mitigating, said that although a few years older than his victim was immature for his age. That claim was supported by a psychiatric report. He was a 21-year-old man who had taken responsibility for his actions in spite of knowing there was a lengthy sentence ahead of him, she said. Ms Tapper reminded the judge there were a number of positive character references submitted in support of her client. Prior to his remand he had dreams of becoming a pastry chef. Phillips, of Ploughley Road, Ambrosden, pleaded guilty a month before his trial date to rape, sexual assault by penetration and sexual assault. He hada one previous conviction for fare dodging on the railway.

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This is the face of convicted sex offender Victor Balfour, who was jailed for 20 months yesterday for repeatedly logging onto library computers in breach of a court order. The 68-year-old had been released on bail by Record of Oxford Judge Ian Pringle QC just days before he went to a public library in Weymouth, Dorset, and asked to use the computers. That was despite a stern warning from Judge Pringle that Balfour, who was in Oxford Crown Court for using the Westgate library computers in breach of his sexual harm prevention order, was not allowed to use any computer unless the internet history was saved. On Thursday, the court was told Balfour used the Weymouth library computers three times in December and January, while he was on a four-month deferred sentence. Jailing him for 20 months, Judge Pringle said: I am quite satisfied you were fully aware of what you were doing. Thames Valley Police has now released Balfours custody shot.

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This is the face of paedophile Martyn Rodger, who tried to hide a new Chromebook from detectives just weeks after being given a court order requiring him to register digital devices with the police. The 26-year-old was spared an immediate prison sentence last August for looking at indecent images of children. But the judge imposed a sexual harm prevention order aimed at limiting his access to the internet and requiring him to register new digital devices with the police. He breached the order within barely a month of its imposition. Rodger, whose financial affairs are managed by social services, asked for the money to buy a new laptop. His social worker informed the police, who visited the mans Witney home on September 16 when the device still hadnt been logged with them. Rodger initially lied, saying he had no new computer. When the device was found beneath his mattress he changed his story, claiming that he planned to register it the following day. Jailing him for 18 months at Oxford Crown Court last week, Judge Maria Lamb told Rodger, of Eastfield Road, Witney: I am quite satisfied you knew perfectly well you should have notified [the police of] the existence of that Chromebook.

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A child rapist was recorded on his works van dash cam asking his victim if he could take a picture, a court heard. Ian Bailey, 56, molested his victim a pre-teen girl while taking her out in his works van. He groomed her, promising her money or meals at McDonald's in exchange for sex. His vile behaviour was discovered when his boss looked at footage from the vans dash cam. Bailey could be heard asking a girl, speaking in what sounded like a childs voice, if he could take a picture of her private parts. Jailing him for 19 years on Monday and ordering he serve an extended six years on licence, Judge Nigel Daly said: In my judgement what you did was to take away this girls childhood and youve also destroyed her adult life as well. All to satisfy your deviant sexual interest. Even now, reading the pre-sentence report, you are incapable of acknowledging what you have done and the effect that this may have had upon her. In a victim personal statement read to Oxford Crown Court by prosecutor Alexandra Bull, the girl said: I feel empty inside as if there is nothing there literally nothing there, literally nothing. Half of the time she wanted a new body, she said. If I could leave it I would, she added. The girl said she had struggled to sleep or eat and had suffered meltdowns as a result of what happened to her. Her mother said in a victim personal statement of her own, that her daughters ordeal was a mothers worst nightmare'. She added: Everyone is a victim in this except him. Bailey, of HMP Bullingdon but formerly of Banbury, was found guilty in February of four counts of rape of a child under-13, including two charges that alleged his victim was assaulted on at least 10 occasions. He pleaded guilty to inciting a child under-13 to engage in sexual activity and making an indecent image of a child. Judge Daly told the lawyers at Mondays sentencing hearing: I was shocked by what I heard of what she was saying when all this was going on in the van and the way in which she said it - and also in the matter of fact way she described things as if they were normal. Sentencing Bailey, the judge said he clearly thought this is normal behaviour as well. He concluded that the defendant presented a risk of serious harm to the public and particularly to pre-pubescent girls. Mitigating, Sumita Mahtab-Shaikh said her client had been doing courses while in prison and had applied for a job in the prisons gardens. His parents were in their 70s and 80s.

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A RAPISTS supporter shouted you lot are d***heads from the public gallery as a judge jailed his friend for four-and-a-half years. Clayton Moiloa, 27, had denied raping the girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, when he was in his early teens in the late 2000s. But jurors at Oxford Crown Court found him guilty of two counts of rape in January. He was acquitted of other, similar, charges. On Monday, as Judge Maria Lamb told Moiloa you are a sex offender and would remain on the sex offender register for the rest of his life, a man in the public gallery was heard to snort and repeat hes not. All you lot are d***heads, he said. Hes not a sex offender. Hes not. During the trial, jurors heard that the victim initially told a friend with whom she played computer games online about Moiloas assaults. Her mother spoke to her in 2016 about going to the police, but it wasnt until after she disclosed the assaults to a support worker in November 2019 that detectives became involved. The girl was said to have suffered flashbacks to what happened. Mitigating, Alistair Grainger said his client had had a shocking start in his life. He was exposed to domestic violence at an early age and suffered it himself, the court heard. As a youth and young man, he was in and out of court. However, he had no convictions for serious violence or sexual offending, Mr Grainger said as he tried to convince the judge that Moiloa should not receive an extended sentence as a dangerous offender. Sentencing Moiloa to four-and-a-half years imprisonment, Judge Lamb noted the defendants mitigation, including his educational difficulties and mental health problems. You were somebody who experienced domestic violence both by witnessing it [happening] to other family members and you also experienced it and were a recipient of domestic abuse violence towards you as well in your young years, she said. You were clearly a troubled youngster. The report both of the psychologist and the author of the pre-sentence report makes that clear. Judge Lamb said that, had Moiloa been an older youth when he carried out the assaults, she would have taken a starting point of nine years imprisonment. However, she reduced it to four-and-a-half years bearing in mindthat you were very young, you were very troubled at the time. She said she was not finding Moiloa to be a dangerous offender, as he had not gone on to commit offences that would attract an extended sentence. Moiloa, now of HMP Bullingdon but formerly of Oxford, was made subject to indefinite sexual harm prevention and restraining orders limiting his access to children and banning him from contacting his victim.

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A man from Oxford has today, Thursday, 10 March, been sentenced to 13 years in jail after being found guilty of four counts of serious child sex offences.

Henry Herbert Lenton, aged 36, from Barton Village Road in Oxford has been jailed for 13 years after being convicted of the following offences:

- 1 count of raping a child under 13

- 2 counts of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity

- 1 count of sexual assault of a child under 13

The charges relate to offences that took place against one child between January 2019 and January 2021 in Bordon.

Lenton denied the charges but following a four day trial at Winchester Crown Court in February, he was found guilty of all four counts.

Appearing at Winchester Crown Court today (Thursday, 10 March) Lenton was jailed for 13 years with a one year extended licence period.

In addition to his custodial sentence, Lenton will be placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life and subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

Following the sentence, Detective Constable James Copley from Hampshire Constabularys Child Abuse Investigation team said This was a horrific and prolonged period of abuse against a child.

I would like to commend the child for their courage in coming forward and telling us what happened and for their bravery throughout this investigation.

We know how hard it is to come forward and report abuse which is why we have specially trained officers who support survivors throughout the investigation and the court process.

No child should have to suffer and we hope this case shows that we are committed to bringing to justice those who target children in this way.

We encourage anyone who is being abused or knows of someone who is being abused to contact us on 101 where you can speak to one of our specialist officers in confidence.

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A former Lidl worker who claimed that key evidence from a pair of pyjamas had been overlooked in his 2018 trial has had his appeal thrown out.

Justin Finnerty, then 22, was jailed for eight years and given an extended four year licence period after jurors at Oxford Crown Court convicted him of rape and sexual assault by penetration three-and-a-half years ago.

He raped the woman as she lay on his sofa, having invited her back to his Bicester home. His girlfriend was upstairs in the couples bedroom when he carried out his sick attack in July 2017. At his trial, Finnerty denied raping the woman claiming that they had had unprotected consensual sex several days earlier.

Lawyers for Finnerty asked the Court of Appeal on Tuesday to quash the Oxford jurys convictions, claiming that new evidence and alleged issues in how the trial was handled made them unsafe.

The new evidence was a report by a forensics expert, instructed by the bearded rapists legal team, questioning why Finnertys semen was apparently not found on pyjama bottoms worn by the victim on the night of the assault. It transpired that samples taken from the victim had been destroyed by the authorities.

Finnerty, formerly of Roman Way, Bicester, represented by Michelle Heeley QC at the hearing in the Royal Courts of Justice, argued that Judge Ian Pringle QC had failed to remind the jury of the defendants account when after being asked to by the 12-strong panel - he read from the victims police interview recounting her memory of the assault.

He suggested the jury was misled by inaccurate timings in a table of text messages he sent his girlfriend while downstairs with his victim, who was being sick. He claimed it meant the jurors were misled as to the amount of time he and the victim were alone together, giving the impression that it was for longer.

Rejecting the application for permission to appeal, Lord Justice Green said the new evidence the pyjamas could have been tested at the time and for whatever reason the defendants lawyers had not done so.

The new forensic report was based on a series of assumptions [about] what happened to the pyjamas that might be inaccurate.

The panel of three appeal judges said Judge Pringle, the trial judge, did not err in his handling of the case. We are clear none of it [the new evidence or grounds of appeal] casts doubt on the correctness of the convictions, Lord Justice Green said.

The Court of Appeal upheld the 12 year extended sentence, concluding: This was repeat offending upon a person in a vulnerable, incapacitated state. The pre-sentence report concluded [Finnerty] posed a danger to women.

We have read the pre-sentence report carefully and we conclude the judge was entitled to treat it as an important and persuasive factor in his own sentencing decision.

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The face of a Bucks sex pest who was jailed after asking "anyone want BJ?" on a swingers messaging app has been revealed. Police have released the mugshot of sex offender Stephen Owen, 60, after he was locked up for three years and two months on Friday 11 February. At his sentencing hearing at Amersham Law Courts, Owen, from Kidlington, Oxfordshire, pleaded guilty to four counts of breaching a sexual harm prevention order. The court heard how Owen was slapped with the 10-year order after he was convicted of producing indecent images of children - but he then proceeded to breach the order the day after he was given it. The court order banned Owen from downloading private messaging apps without the police's permission and prohibited him from using fake names on the internet. While based in Bucks, Owen breached the order when he downloaded the app Fab Swingers - used for hookups and sexual communications - and posted a message asking "anyone want BJ?" After meeting a man for a sexual encounter, the court heard that Owen asked the man if he wanted to see sexual images of children. The man declined and called the police over to his concerns about Owen's proposition. The court heard how between June 6, 2021 and October 2, 2021, Owen breached the order multiple times by downloading and using private chat features on apps including Whatsapp, Tinder, Snapchat and Badoo. At the same time as his offending, Owen was taking part in a rehabilitation programme that was supposed to be educating him on the wrongs of sexual crime. Judge Catherine Tulk was unimpressed that Owen had started offending so soon after she had given him the sexual harm prevention order, sentencing him to 22 months in prison as well as triggering a 16-month suspended sentence he was serving from his previous conviction. Judge Tulk said: What is really troubling me is that his probation report is really positive. He was a star worker. But all the time he was doing that he was offending. While on the face of it he was complying with it, when one looks at it its clear it was not genuine.

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A drunken beggar groped a mum-of-two on her own doorstep in a bizarre assault after he stopped at her door to ask for directions to the train station or bus stop. The woman had shielded her young daughter from creep Andrei Sandu after he knocked on her front door in Wheatley on December 6, 2020. An attempt to work out what the Romanian 21-year-old was saying using website Google Translate failed as he is illiterate. When she switched to a voice translation app on her phone the struggles continued. He was said to have reached forward to touch her thigh as if removing a piece of fluff from her clothing. Later in the exchange he groped the woman over her clothes and in front of her young daughter. Mitigating, Peter du Feu told Oxford Crown Court on Thursday: My first question to him in the cells today was do you want to be deported? He didnt answer that question but instead said: I am guilty, I am a stupid, guilty man. I have done it and I am very sorry. Jailing him for 18 months, Recorder John Hardy QC told Sandu: Your counsel with characteristic eloquence accepts that your behaviour was bizarre and inexplicable and no doubt fuelled by drink. But the effect it had on this young mother was to destroy her trust not only in you but in others and to make her reluctant to talk to or speak kindly to strangers. The effect of the jail sentence was that Sandu would likely be deported, the judge said. He told the defendant that judges no longer had the power to direct defendants deportation but added: Had I had that power I would have strongly recommended that you be returned to your home. The court heard that Sandu grew up in poverty with his six siblings in a two-bedroom home in rural Romania. He was illiterate and, his barrister suggested, might have learning difficulties. He came to the UK in search of a better life but became homeless. He had done short stints in jail for minor offences in Humberside and Lincolnshire but had no previous convictions for sexual offending. Mr du Feu said: I wish on his behalf, your honour, I could begin to explain what happened on that night. He cant explain it. He has relatively little memory of it because he was very intoxicated. That doesnt mitigate the offence. We know, if anything, it makes it worse but it perhaps explains his unusual behaviour. Sandu, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to sexual assault by touching. He will be a registered sex offender for 10 years. Welcoming the sentence, PC Curtis Emery said: This was an in-depth investigation with an aggrieved who managed to work well with officers at a vital time immediately after the incident. She gave us valuable information to locate and arrest Sandu, who took advantage of a stranger attempting to help him. I hope this sentence gives satisfaction and closure to the victim. Although there are no physical injuries to her, no sentence will ever take away the emotional effect. To have a custodial sentence given to an unwitnessed sexual assault, with no forensic opportunities, is a great achievement and has left the victim feeling extremely relieved at the final decision. Sandu fully deserves the sentence given to him. This sets an example of the length that Thames Valley Police will go to in order to bring offenders to justice, even in scenarios with very little physical evidence.