A STUDENT was the victim of a sexual attack while attending a music festival at an Oxfordshire university campus.

The incident took place at the annual This is Oxford Festival which takes place at the playing fields of Oxford Brookes University’s Wheatley Campus on May 18, 2019.

While the girl was leaving the event, an attacker tried to rape the student until security staff were flagged down by two witnesses.

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A man was arrested, 26-year-old Lee Lewis, who is now standing trial at Oxford Crown Court charged with attempted rape, assault by penetration, and sexual assault.

However, he denied the offences stating that he had tried to help the woman as she was attacked by two other men as opposed to him being the perpetrator.

Opening the case on Monday (April 29), prosecutor Brian Reece said there is no dispute the girl was assaulted but the issue is by whom.

He said the girl was walking alone at the festival off College Close when she was ‘dragged to the floor, grabbed around her throat and held down’.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sexually assaulted during the attack.

Mr Reece said: “Two young women happened to walked past the site of the attack and heard signs of distress. One girl went to get help and returned with a female security officer.”

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It was heard that two other security guards chased after a man they believed to be the attacker and apprehended Lewis, whom one officer said had his ‘belt unfastened’.

They noted Lewis also had injuries to his face, neck and knees. Lewis was handed over and arrested by police who interviewed the festival-goer on two occasions.

A jury heard that during the first interview he told police that he ‘saw a girl in distress and went to help her’ before leaving the site.

He said the injuries were sustained as he was drunk and had fallen over a lot throughout the day.

After DNA evidence showed that the girl’s DNA was found on the defendant’s genitals and his DNA on her throat, he said when he had tried to help her she had struck him and he ‘reacted’ by grabbing her throat briefly.

Lewis said he must have then touched himself and that is how the DNA had transferred.

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When asked why his evidence had changed slightly, Lewis, of an address in Ipswich, blamed the ‘legal advice’ he had received during the first interview.

However, Mr Reece told the jury it is the prosecution’s case that Lewis ‘designed the story to explain the DNA on her throat’.

The trial continues.