A bum groper who turned to Shaggy’s 2000 hit ‘It Wasn’t Me’ as he defended himself against claims he sexually assaulted five women has been found guilty.

Artig Emmanuel, 24, slapped or touched the five women over a two-night spree in Didcot town centre in November 2020.

Defending himself against the five allegations of sexual assault, the professional engineer vigorously denied being the man responsible for the bottom touching.

He turned to the words of reggae star Shaggy, whose 2000 hit ‘It Wasn’t Me’ features a protagonist who repeats the line in the face of apparently insurmountable evidence of his infidelity.

“To quote Shaggy: ‘It Wasn’t Me’,” he told the court.

From the witness stand, he went on to cite rapper Skepta’s single ‘That’s Not Me’ and reminded the jury of the words of Old Testament ‘wise guy’ King Solomon that ‘what is lacking cannot be counted’.

Maintaining that he was innocent of the assaults, Emmanuel told the jury: “I think it should be safe for women to be able to walk around the streets. Women have to worry about this stuff all the time. I think women shouldn’t have to worry about this stuff.”

Jurors took almost eight-and-a-half hours to reach their verdicts, finding him guilty by a majority of 11 to one of three of the sexual assault allegations and unanimously convicting him of the remaining two charges.

Following the convictions, Judge Nigel Daly ordered Emmanuel’s release on bail pending his sentencing next month.

The defendant had done almost 240 days on remand and a further 214 on a 12-hour curfew, meaning he had served more than a year inside.

“He’s done more in prison than he would have done had he been convicted at a much earlier time and I consider he has been punished enough,” the judge said.

A date for his sentencing will be fixed on Friday.

Judge Daly told the jury: “What I am ging to do is get reports and I am going to see if there is anything we can do, basically, to help him with his Autism and the way he reacts to people.

“Now, we’ve got still to protect other people, we’ve got to protect ladies who want to go out jogging at night or whatever. It may be he has already learnt his lesson after what happened in his case, but we don’t know.”

Emmanuel, of Blackthorn Road, Didcot, will also be sentenced for sexually assault committed in Wantage in 2021. An Oxford jury convicted him of that assault – on a female dog walker – earlier this year, when a judge remanded him pending the outcome of the Didcot trial.

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