A man who called the woman he’d just met in a bar vile names as he sexually assaulted her has been jailed for a year.

And around a week before the assault in a Witney alleyway in January 2019, Joseph Parkin had searched the internet for ‘drunk girl street rape porn’, Oxford Crown Court heard.

The 27-year-old, who in July was found guilty of two counts of sexual assault by touching but cleared of attempting to rape his victim, claimed that he’d searched for the term as he’d previously happened across a video with a similar title and had found the actress attractive. He was not interested in violent pornography, he said.

But Judge Michael Gledhill QC rejected Parkin’s explanation, given from the witness stand during his sentencing hearing on Monday.

“That causes me very serious concerns. The explanation you have given firstly in the defence statement then repeated in evidence before me a few minutes ago just doesn’t hold water. It’s complete nonsense,” the judge said.

“It is raising my concerns now as to the risk that you currently pose to lone women in a state of intoxication that you might come across.”

During the trial in July, jurors heard that Parkin and his victim had met at the Rocket bar in Witney town centre on January 17, 2019.

They had shared a kiss and left the bar together. Parkin, who was said to have repeatedly asked to stay at the woman’s house that night, led the woman down an alleyway. He pawed at her and asked her to perform oral sex on him, it was said. He then touched her sexually and called her vile names.

She ran from him but had hurt her ankle. The woman claimed Parkin had ‘laughed at her distress’.

Parkin claimed he’d left the bar with the woman and, as he did not know Witney well, hoped she’d help him find the taxi stand. They had walked around chatting for between an hour and 90 minutes.

In a victim personal statement read to the court after Parkin’s conviction, the woman said she had struggled to leave the house after the attack. “On that night I put my trust in him to walk me home and he clearly had other ideas,” she added.

Jailing Parkin for a year, Judge Gledhill said: “Attacking a lone woman in the early hours of the morning, taking them down a secluded alley knowing they were drunk and therefore unlikely to be able to resist you means in my judgement you have to go to prison.

“A clear message has to go out that lone women who are under the influence of drink are vulnerable and anybody who takes advantage of them in sexual ways as you have done must go to prison.”

Lyall Thompson, mitigating, said his client continued to maintain his innocence, although he acknowledged and was sorry for any distress the complainant felt. He had no previous convictions on his record, only a caution for harassing a former partner.

He said the defendant lost his previous job after a colleague alerted bosses to the charges he faced. More recently, he had spent time volunteering at an Oxfam charity bookshop.

Parkin, of Finstock, Oxfordshire, must register as a sex offender for 10 years. A restraining order prevents him from contacting his victim for the same length of time.

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