A drunk pervert who pawed women in a public park and the street was saved from custody thanks to his two young children.

Christopher Roberts, 25, was found guilty last month of the two sex assaults in Banbury town centre.

Oxford Crown Court heard that the Banbury dad – who had been on an all-night drinking sessions before molesting the two women – still did not accept his guilt, although respected the findings of the jury.

Sentencing him to 18 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years, Judge Nigel Daly said: “When a discussion of a custodial sentence was attempted with you [by the probation officer writing the pre-sentence report], you said 'it will take an army to separate me from my children and either way I’d end up dead'.

“I’m not that bothered about what you feel about your children, but I am bothered about the impact of custody on those two young children and it is for that reason and that reason alone, taken together with the progress you have made with the social services, that I feel that I am able in all the circumstances to suspend the sentence.”

He told Roberts: “I have read the pre-sentence report and I have read what it says about potential sexual motivation behind it and, obviously, there must have been some sexual motivation behind it.

“But in addition I think you were drunk. You just didn’t care what you did.

“You violated both these women with no concern for what you’d done.”

During the trial, jurors heard that Roberts had grabbed one woman as she walked through the People’s Park on the morning of May 25, 2019. He then attempted to pull another woman’s jogging bottoms down.

In a victim personal statement read to the court by prosecutor Christopher Kerr, the first woman told the defendant he had ‘destroyed’ her confidence and self-esteem. She ‘hated’ her body: “People think they can just do what they want to it – and they do.”

The second victim spoke of how she’d collapsed on to her daughter in panic when, walking away from court after giving evidence at the trial, she’d seen a stranger walking behind them down an alleyway.

Mitigating, Gareth James said Roberts was the primary carer for his two children. He’d experienced mental health problems before.

Roberts, of Bird Close, Banbury, had convictions for public disorder, but nothing of a similar nature on his criminal record.

As part of his 18-month suspended sentence, the defendant was ordered to complete the sex offender rehabilitation programme. A restraining order bans him from contacting his two victims and he will be on the sex offender register for 10 years.

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