Breached his bail and sexually assaulted two women in bar
A man who sexually assaulted two women in a Town bar when he was drunk was jailed for a total of eight months when he appeared in the Magistrate’s Court from custody.
Ashley Jerome Leakey, 40, denied both matters but had been found guilty at trial.
He also admitted failing to surrender to court custody in October, for which he was arrested in the UK and returned to Guernsey.
His father had put up £10,000 security for his son’s bail, which will now be forfeited.
The sexual assaults took place in Bad Habits in July.
In a victim impact statement, one of the women told of how she had felt violated when being touched without her consent on what should have been an enjoyable night out. On the night in question she had had little to drink.
Defending, Advocate Alan Merrien said it was clear that the amount of alcohol which his client had consumed that night had impacted his memory. He could not admit something that he did not remember.
But he accepted the court’s decision and the consequences which would follow from it, which he expected to be prison.
He had no relevant previous convictions. There was a matter on his record from 2010 and another, for violence, in 2021, but there was nothing in between. He wished to apologise to all concerned, said his advocate, though he had not done this in writing.
Leakey recognised he had been incredibly stupid and had buried his head in the sand by failing to answer to court bail.
Judge Gary Perry said there had been skin-to-skin contact on intimate areas in both of these matters.
The defendant had persistently maintained that there was a conspiracy against him, which was why Judge Perry suspected he could do this again.
‘Men have been behaving in this way for many years and in the past it has been laughed off, not necessarily because women have thought it funny, but because they thought that they would not be listened to if they complained,’ he said.
‘But the world has changed. Despite your own admitted lack of memory, you still forced both victims to have to come to court and give evidence.’
This was not an uncommon scenario, he said, a drunken older man seemingly thinking that he would be attractive to women much younger than him.
Leakey was jailed for three months for each sexual assault, plus two months for the bail breach. All were consecutive.
Notification requirements will apply for seven years.
