Shy student convicted of sex assault
A SHY teenager who touched a fellow A-level student on the arm and waist as he tried to talk to her in the street was ordered to pay her £250 compensation yesterday.
Jamie Griffiths, 19, looked up “how to make a friend” on the internet then made two attempts to engage the girl in conversation as she walked to school.
The victim, then 17, burst into tears during the second encounter and went to police with her mother. She later described how her school work and mental health had suffered.
Griffiths, of Knutsford, Cheshire, was convicted at Manchester magistrates court of two charges of sexual assault.
He was ordered to do 200 hours’ unpaid work and sign the Sex Offender Register for five years. Now a student at Durham University, Griffiths denied the charges, claiming he was a “shy, anxious and awkward”.
His lawyer Claire Aldridge said: “He feels lessons have been learned.” 58 died in lorry driven by Perry Wacker, inset
RUTHLESS organised crime gangs are targeting gaps in Britain’s border security to “remorselessly” exploit desperate migrants, it was claimed last night.
The truck horror in Grays has tragic similarities to an incident in Dover in 2000 where 58 Chinese migrants were found dead in a tomato lorry.
Dutch trucker Perry Wacker was later jailed for 14 years for the manslaughter of the victims, who had paid £20,000 each to people traffickers.
In yesterday’s horror the trailer carrying the suspected migrants arrived in Purfleet, Essex, from the
Belgian port of Zeebrugge early in the morning.
The National Crime Agency has identified Zeebrugge as one of the most commonly used ports for smuggling gangs.
Sophisticated
It is close to the many migrant camps scattered across the coastlines of northern France, Belgium and Holland, as people mainly from the Middle East attempt to reach the UK.
Smuggling gangs exploiting their desperation can charge a fortune to hide them in the back of cramped lorries in horrendous conditions or sent across the Channel in tiny, flimsy boats.
A thousand people, many of them Iraqi Kurds, were cleared from a migrant camp in Dunkirk last month.
Crooks are said to use “very sophisticated” methods to get the migrants into trailers, including cutting holes through roofs and unbolting and re-bolting doors.
Smuggling gangs regularly pose a major threat to lorry drivers, the boss of a trade association warned yesterday. Richard Burnett, chief