A dad maintained his innocence as he was jailed for three years for sexually assaulting a teen woman five years ago.
Ian Hatch, now 43, was found guilty last year of sexually assaulting the 19-year-old after unexpectedly getting into bed with her.
The Chipping Norton man was also convicted of making a sexually inappropriate remark to the same woman some years earlier, when she was 15.
She was sitting on his lap in a pub when he suggested that she perform oral sex on him; the invitation was never acted upon.
Jurors were unable to reach verdicts on a number of allegations relating to a second woman. At a retrial, he was cleared of one of the charges but the jury could not return unanimous or majority verdicts on a further two allegations.
On Friday (March 31), when Hatch returned to Oxford Crown Court to be sentenced, Judge Michael Gledhill KC said it gave him ‘no pleasure’ to send the dad-of-one to prison.
“I’m afraid I have to follow the verdict of the jury. They were in no doubt at all you were guilty of these offences,” he said.
Judge Gledhill described what Hatch did as a ‘terrible breach of trust and a terrible thing’.
Speaking in his own defence, as he did at the trial, Hatch told the judge: “I’m sorry for all the grief that I caused everyone but I still maintain my innocence.”
Hatch, of Cornish Road, Chipping Norton, will remain on the sex offender register for life.
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