A MAN who followed dog walkers around a South Oxfordshire beauty spot before pushing a woman into stinging nettles and climbing on top of her has been jailed.

Robert Newman (pictured), of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, ‘deliberately targeted women’ who were walking alone at Hurst Water Meadow in Dorchester, near Wallingford, on August 3.

Oxford Mail: Robert NewmanRobert Newman

In a trial at Oxford Crown Court last month, it was heard how the 33-year-old was spotted by the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, ‘acting oddly’ on a bridge into the field at about 10am.

The bridge leads to some ‘kissing gates’ which then open onto the park that has three tracks going left, right and down the middle.

She walked with her dog down the path to the right, away from the man, but when she turned back he was following her and walking quickly.

She stopped so he could pass her but ‘within a moment’ he had pushed her, bent over and was trying to climb on top of her.

In court, jurors heard how she ‘screamed and shouted’, ‘kicked and punched him’ and he simply told her to ‘shh’ and ‘be quiet’, ‘like he was talking to a child’.

She managed to make an escape and asked for help.

Only half an hour before, another woman in her 60s had said she had been left ‘shaking like a leaf’ after Newman followed her around the park.

She had also taken the pathway leading right around the river and it was only when her dog started barking that she turned around and saw him behind her.

She said she stopped to let him pass and went back in the opposite direction where she bumped into some neighbours and then saw him for the second time.

Oxford Mail:

She went back home ‘very shaken’ and called the police to tell them what had happened when she heard a helicopter circling the skies.

Newman was convicted of assault by beating and committing an assault with intent to commit a relevant sexual offence.

Yesterday, at the same court he was sentenced to 22 months in prison.

Investigating officer Detective Constable Jen Gibbons, of Abingdon CID, said: “Newman deliberately targeted women who were walking alone and these incidents understandably left the victims very shaken.

“We are pleased he is now unable to cause any further harm to the community and hope this result brings some kind of closure to those involved.”

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