A TICKET inspector who touched a train passenger’s leg has been cleared of sexual assault.

First Great Western employee Jamie Broad admitted touching the 18-year-old woman’s leg and putting his arm around her on a train between Oxford and Didcot on June 8, but the 27-year-old was cleared of sexual assault by magistrates yesterday.

The complainant told the court she had got to know Broad, of Craven Way, Didcot, through her daily commute to Oxford.

She said she had finished work on the day in question and borrowed money from the defendant, who was manning the ticket gates, to buy food at the station before boarding her train.

When Broad came round to check tickets he invited the woman to sit in a quieter part of the train for a chat, the court heard.

She said: “Jamie placed his hand on my thigh and I pushed it off, to which he said ‘do you not like that then?’, to which my response was ‘no’.”

After conversation moved to the woman’s current relationship, she said she told him: “(men) say one thing and mean the opposite.”

She added: “It went quiet while Jamie pulled out his phone and wrote ‘so what would it mean if I said I didn’t want you?’ “I laughed it off and said that I’m not going to reply to that.”

The woman said Broad then put his arm around her before “eventually moving it” off. She made a complaint against him a week later.

Jan Matthews, defending, said it was “a clumsy attempt to flirt with a girl”.