Ex-City player spared jail over sexual assault
FORMER BLUES STAR CLIMBED INTO BED WITH STRANGER AFTER EIGHT-HOUR DRINK BINGE
A FORMER Manchester City player who sexually assaulted a sleeping woman following an eight-hour drinking binge has been spared jail.
Ex-pro Chris Killen – said to have been in a ‘stupefied state’ from alcohol – got into bed with a stranger and touched her bottom.
He had entered the house through unlocked patio doors while a group of women slept.
The 35-year-old father-of-two, who also played for Oldham Athletic, got under the covers next to the woman who was lying alongside her friend. Another woman was also sleeping in the room.
Killen’s victim, who had been drinking, suddenly became aware of a man next to her in bed and ‘froze,’ then felt a hand on her bottom over her underwear, Minshull Street Crown Court heard.
She cried out to her sleeping friend, who used her phone to light up Killen, who removed his hand and sat up in bed amid demands to know who he was and what he was doing there.
Gary Woodall, prosecuting, told the court Killen said his name was ‘John’ and claimed he had arrived at the house with ‘two girls’ before quickly leaving the room.
New Zealand-born Killen returned moments later to ask for his shoes back, the court heard.
The court heard the house, in Bury, was rented out by a property firm he was involved in. Previous hearings were told the offence took place in Killen’s former mansion.
Killen, of London Road, Adlington, near Macclesfield, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to an offence of sexual assault in the early morning of September 17, last year.
He had been out with a friend in Manchester, drinking for eight hours and visiting nightclubs and a lap-dancing bar before getting a taxi to the property.
After his arrest he offered to go around with flowers, wine and chocolates to apologise, but the court heard his victim felt ‘violated and vulnerable.’
In a victim impact statement she told the court: “I felt and still feel uneasy on my own.
“I struggle to sleep. What happened keeps going through my mind. I have not really been myself since it happened.”
Lisa Judge, mitigating, said the defendant’s wife stood by him and he had ‘positive qualities,’ including running his own business and doing charity work.
She added: “He’s acknowledged in the cold light of day when sober the effects this would have. The apology is a full and frank one.”
Judge Maurice Greene said after that after ‘long, hard consideration’ he would pass a 12-month jail sentence.
He said the ‘unusual circumstances’ of the case meant he could suspend it for 18 months and order Killen to do 20 hours rehabilitation activity and 200 hours community service.
Passing sentence he said: “This woman was particularly vulnerable. She was drunk and asleep at the time this incident happened.
“She was in this house where she could expect to feel safe in the room in which she was sleeping.”
Killen was ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for the next 10 years.