Man found guilty of sexual assault after kiss threat to stranger in Wantage

Artig Emmannuel, 24, who claimed he’d only wanted to hug the young dog walker, protested loudly when the jury found him guilty of sexual assault by touching.

“If I was white I would be not guilty,” he shouted from the dock on Tuesday afternoon.

Judge Michael Gledhill QC, who adjourned sentencing for the preparation of probation reports, gave him 45 minutes in the cells to cool off. He later granted Emmannuel, of Blackthorn Road, Didcot, bail, letting him go with the warning: “Pull yourself together, grow up, be a man and don’t behave like a 12-year-old child.”

During the two day trial, jurors at Oxford Crown Court heard that Emmannuel’s victim was walking her dog past King Alfred School, Wantage, on August 12 last year when she was approached by the defendant, who was wearing distinctive turquoise trainers.

She was taken aback when he asked for a hug. Thinking he meant to say hello to her dog, she said he could stroke the animal.

“He said something to the effect of ‘no, can I hug you?’” she told the jury.

“I said no. He grabbed me with his left hand behind [my] head and pulled me into him as if to kiss me and said ‘if you don’t kiss me I will hit you’.”

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, managed to duck beneath his arm and walked off. On her way home she called her then boyfriend who advised she call the police.

Emmannuel, who said he was in Wantage 'to get a vaccine' and see his friend 'Rio', was arrested at his home in Didcot and the turquoise trainers seized.

Giving evidence in his own defence, Emmannuel admitted that he’d asked the woman for a hug but denied threatening to hit her unless she kissed him.

The first class electrical engineering graduate was said to suffer from autism, meaning he struggled to read people.

From the witness stand, he told the jury: “I touched he because I was trying to hug her. I thought I was being friendly. I’m a shy person. I thought I’d act like a confidence man – like what a confident man would do.”

Closing his case, defence barrister Richard Davies said: “Could it simply be a possibility that he is somebody who has behaved a but naively, a bit awkwardly in some misplaced sense of trying to get human affection?”

King Alfred School, Wantage Picture: GOOGLE

Summing up the law, Judge Gledhill acknowledged the jury might feel sympathy for both the victim and the defendant.

But he warned: “This is not a court of sympathy. It is not a court of morals or ethics, it is a court of law.

“My first direction is to put aside any sympathy you have for either the complainant or defendant and look at the evidence in the cold light of day.

“Keep your feet firmly on the ground.”

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