Locations
Severn Street, Hull, East Riding Of Yorkshire, HU8
Description
A seedy pervert drove around east Hull looking opportunities to approach and attack unsuspecting women – and filmed himself grabbing and intimately touching one woman as she walked home alone.
Dylan Templeman made random attacks on women – two of them within an hour of each other – and he was part of a social media group who filmed themselves performing lewd acts in public, a court heard. Templeman, 22, of Severn Street, off Holderness Road, east Hull, admitted two offences of sexual assault on women on September 21 last year.
He also admitted exposing himself to a mother and her stepdaughter in Hull on September 14 and a further offence of having indecent images of children. Julia Baggs, prosecuting, told Grimsby Crown Court that a mother and stepdaughter were walking through Sutton village at 8.40pm on September 14 when the stepdaughter became aware of a man walking closely behind them in a suspicious manner.
When they turned around in Burlington Road, he had exposed himself and was playing with himself. When he was challenged by the women, he ran off. Police were called and, through an identification procedure, they were able to identify the culprit.
On September 21, a woman was walking home alone at 12.20am in Hull, when she was suddenly grabbed on her bottom by a man. She shouted at him and he fled. The woman heard the engine of a car start up nearby and she spotted a small black car.
About 40 minutes later, another woman was walking home after her night shift at 1am on a road in east Hull, about a mile away from where the first sexual assault incident happened.
A man suddenly appeared and grabbed the woman between her legs and touched her intimately. The shocked woman broke free and ran off, pursued by the man. He ran into Bedale Avenue and got into his car.
The victims of both sexual assaults were able to give descriptions of the attacker. Police traced the car the following evening and Templeman was arrested. Analysis of his phone showed footage, which he had taken himself, of him grabbing the woman in the second assault.
Details were given in court of some of the footage shown on a social media platform in which people carried out disgusting acts in public. Templeman had three cautions for sex offences and battery in 2022.
Oliver Shipley, mitigating, said that Templeman had expressed a degree of shame and embarrassment and he said that he was deeply sorry for his actions. He was working in the information technology sector and lived at home with his mother.
Judge Gurdial Singh said that Templeman joined an online group in which "like-minded members boasted about what they did and encouraged people to do the same". The women were vulnerable because they were walking home at night.
Templeman was jailed for two years and seven months. He was given a sexual harm prevention order for life and he must register as a sex offender for life.