Selby teenager locked up for attack on woman (From York Press)

Selby teenager locked up for attack on woman

10:15am Friday 1st June 2012 in News

A YOUTH with a history of sexual offences has been locked up for a terrifying attack on a young woman walking home alone through Selby.

Sobia Ahmed, prosecuting at York Youth Court, said it was the second time the 17-year-old Selby teenager had attacked the same woman.

In 2009, as part of five sexual assaults on girls, he came up behind his victim as she was walking home from school, put his hands under her coat and round her upper body.

On May 1 this year, he followed her into Abbots Road at about midnight, ran up behind her and pulled a hood over her head.

“She described thinking he was going to kill her and thinking he had a knife or something,” said Miss Ahmed.

The woman screamed and eventually managed to push the hood off against his efforts to hold it down and fled to a nearby house when at first she was so upset she had difficulty telling the occupants what had happened.

“They had never seen someone looking so scared. She was panicking,” said Miss Ahmed. Some days later, when she saw a picture of the youth, police noticed her physically shaking with fear.

The youth, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to false imprisonment.

The magistrates accepted his assertion he had not deliberately targeted the woman. York Youth Court heard the first sexual allegation against him had been made when he was 11.

The justices gave the youth an 18-month detention and training order and made a five-year sexual offences and prevention order banning him from following or approaching any girl or woman on her own in a public place, and prevented him contacting the woman victim in any way.

Magistrates rejected a prosecution bid that the youth wear a GPS tag at all times for the next five years, in order for police to always know where he was.

For the youth, Damien Morrison said a psychiatrist had assessed his sexual actions were caused by his lack of social skills and were not designed to harm women or girls. Instead, he was seeking warmth and love. Not all the sexual allegations against him had led to cautions or court appearances.