Elderly man sexually assaulted vulnerable young woman on bus

AN 85-YEAR-OLD Derbyshire pensioner sexually assaulted a vulnerable young woman on a bus.

Derby Crown Court heard how John Cater targeted the victim, deliberately sitting next to her and then touching her thigh.

On what the prosecution said was “four or five occasions,” the 85-year-old made beelines for the woman, who unsuccessfully tried to place her bag on the seat next to her to deter him.

He would then make inappropriate sexual remarks to the victim, who was in her 20s, including inviting her to touch him sexually.

And all the while he was doing this, Cater was on a suspended prison sentence for sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl.

Handing him a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for 15 months, Judge Shaun Smith QC said: “In your later years you have (developed) a preoccupation with women which is unpleasant.

“This was on more than one occasion but there are mitigating features in relation to you.

“I have read a 48-page doctor’s report on you which talks about your ailing health – physical and mental – which make you behave in a sociallyunacceptable way.

“It is custody and the only question is whether it should be immediate or not. And I’m not sending an 85-year-old man into custody.”

Siward James-Moore, prosecuting, said Cater, of Hunloke Avenue, Boythorpe, Chesterfield, at first denied the allegations, but later pleaded guilty to sexual assault which put him in breach of the previously-imposed suspended sentence for the same crime against the teenage girl, also in Chesterfield.

As well as the suspended sentence, Judge Smith handed the defendant a five-year restraining order and ordered him to be on the sex offender register for seven years.