Woman spared jail after groping man’s genitals in ‘drunken joke’

A woman who groped a man’s genitals in a pub has avoided a jail sentence and was fined after a judge said the sexual assault was a ‘‘drunken joke gone wrong”.

Chloe Tait, a 28-year-old sales representative, was said to have left the male victim ‘‘frozen’’ in shock after she molested him at a table in front of his friends while her sister was in the ladies toilet, a court heard.

During the incident at a Wetherspoons pub in Chester, Tait had got involved with ‘‘small talk’’ with the man who was sitting on a table next to her.

She then started becoming more intimate with him, leaning on his arm and touching his and his friend’s faces, Chester magistrates’ court was told.

When asked why she was touching the men’s faces, she replied, “Because they like it” and then grabbed her victim’s crotch and genitals.

Tait, who has dated her long-term same-sex partner for 13 years, left the pub shortly after the attack but was later arrested.

She said the incident was a ‘‘put-down’’ and insisted she had not done it for sexual gratification.

Sex offenders’ register

Tait who admitted sexual assault faced being put on a sex offenders register.

Prosecutors suggested she be made subject of a community order which would automatically require her to notify police of her whereabouts.

Instead she was ordered to pay the victim £150 in compensation plus £172 in costs and a victim surcharge.

JP Mark Turner, in sentencing, told her: “The offence on that evening was not predatory - it was basically, as we see it, a drunken joke that goes wrong.

“That is the politest way of putting it. Something has gone wrong that night.”