A FATHER of two groped a stranger’s breast in a crowded pub.
The incident happened one night in summer, 2022, at The White Horse in Hermitage.
Kirk Willmoth, a 30-year-old father of two who lives in Wythe Close, Hermitage, had also been accused of a serious sexual assault by penetration and a second charge of sexual touching.
But following a trial at Reading Crown Court, Willmoth was acquitted on Friday, May 24, of both those charges.
However he was convicted of one count of sexual touching, knowing his victim did not consent.
Willmoth had told jurors there had been no sexual contact whatever and that it was a case of hell having no fury like a woman scorned, after he rejected her advances.
The woman, who can not be identified, said she had been with friends and had had one glass of wine when Willmoth began making sexualised remarks about her.
She claimed he groped her breast by putting his hand in her coat top pocket.
Then, when she went outside for a cigarette, she said he grabbed her, forcing his hand down her jeans and into her vagina.
She told the jury: “I said no.
“I was crying; I was upset and said ‘just get away from me,’ or something like that.”
Stephen Shay, barrister for Willmoth asked: “Why did you go out without any knickers?
“Were you hoping to meet someone to have sex with them?”
The woman vehemently denied the suggestion and said it was not unusual for her to forego underwear on a night out.
But Willmoth told jurors a very different story.
He said he had popped out of the crowded pub for a cigarette when the woman, who he did not know, approached him and tried to kiss him.
Willmoth said: “She just started pouncing on me and I was, like: ‘whoa, whoa, whoa….what are you doing, calm yourself down.’
“She was asking me to take her into the toilets and f*** her in the toilets.
“I was, like, ‘no, I’ve got a missus - I’m getting married.’”
He told jurors: “I was just astounded.”
Willmoth said he went back inside but, later, went back out and saw the woman sobbing and being comforted by friends.
When he asked her if she was alright, the court heard, a male told him: “Leave her alone, you’ve upset her.”
Cross examining Willmoth, prosecution barrister Julian Lynch asked: “So she’s so offended by your refusal to have sex with her, she works herself up over 20 minutes into tears and then tells a load of lies about you?”
Willmoth replied: “One hundred per cent.”
Jurors have heard from prosecution witnesses who said that, during the evening Willmoth was making sexual remarks and making people feel uncomfortable.
Mr Lynch asked Willmoth his explanation for that.
He replied: “They’re lying.”
Willmoth insisted it was “just not in my nature to go up and grab some woman in a pub.”
Jurors were told that Willmoth has no prior convictions but has been cautioned for physically assaulting assaulting a male friend in a pub.
Following the verdicts, Judge Alan Blake adjourned sentencing for reports to be prepared.
Willmoth was meanwhile released on bail.
