A SEX offender who accosted a woman at a bus stop outside Warwick Hospital and began stroking her leg and making suggestive comments has been jailed for three months.
Dale Radburn, who is from Warwick but of no fixed address, pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to sexually assaulting the woman during the incident more than two years ago.
The 39-year-old, who had denied the charge but changed his plea to guilty just days before he was due to stand trial, was jailed for 13 weeks and ordered to register as a sex offender for seven years.
Prosecutor Walter Bealby said Radburn had assaulted the woman while she sat in a bus shelter outside Warwick Hospital one morning in June 2015.
Radburn, who was already subject to registration as a sex offender after sexually assaulting a ten-year-old girl in 2012, had been drinking and had a bottle of wine in a bag.
Fortunately a member of the hospital staff had been looking for the woman, who has mental health problems, after she had absconded from A&E, and saw them in the shelter.
Two members of the hospital’s security staff, who had had previous dealings with Radburn, then arrived as he continued touching the woman’s leg and arm.
And as they then led her back towards A&E, he followed them part of the way, but then walked off.
When he was arrested the following day, Radburn denied even being at the shelter, said Mr Bealby.
But questioned again two weeks later Radburn, who has brain damage as a result of alcohol abuse, said he had remembered what had happened, and that he had been at the shelter.
Mr Bealby added Radburn had convictions for offences including theft and being drunk and disorderly, and in 2012 had been given a 12-month suspended sentence for sexually assaulting a ten-year-old girl.
Matthew Barnes, defending, said alcohol was Radburn’s problem.
Sentencing Radburn, Judge Andrew Lockhart QC told him: “You have an appalling record, one which has been punctuated by alcohol over the course of the years, and I have no doubt that has damaged your brain.”
