A man who posed as a police officer before sexually assaulting two teenage girls in a wood has been jailed. Aaron Grimshaw, 23, approached the 16-year-olds at Tutshill Recreation Ground near Chepstow, Gloucestershire, on May 22.
Grimshaw showed the girls a wallet with a metal emblem on and threatened to take them to a police station or call their parents if they refused to let him search them. He then touched their legs, breasts and bottoms under their clothes.
Friends filmed the assault
One of the girls yelled, "No, stop. I am not okay with this", alerting friends nearby. The friends surrounded Grimshaw and filmed him, with the man falsely claiming that "she consented". He then left after telling them he would call for uniformed officers.
Police were called and identified Grimshaw from his clothes and the video recording. He was later charged with two counts of sexual assault.
Sentencing and additional offences
Grimshaw pleaded guilty to both charges at Cheltenham Magistrates' Court on May 25 and was released on bail with conditions not to have unsupervised contact with anyone under 18.
He appeared at Bradford Crown Court on September 17, where he was sentenced to a year in prison. During the same hearing, he was also sentenced to an additional four and a half years in prison to run consecutively for unrelated offences investigated by West Yorkshire Police. He had admitted to a string of offences, including sexual assault, sexual activity with a child, engaging in sexual communication with a child and making indecent images of a child.
Grimshaw was added to the Sex Offender Register and issued with a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
Victim impact statements
In an impact statement, one of the girls told the court: "I no longer feel safe around big crowds and sometimes I feel unsafe walking on my own, especially past men. I find it very hard to believe people are who they say they are."
"Even though I am trying to move forward, the effects on me mentally will always remain and I will always remember what he did to me."
The second girl said: "When this man approached me claiming to be a police officer, I felt intimidated. It has now left me with a trauma and a long-term fear of authority."
Det Cons Caroline George from Gloucestershire Police thanked the girls for their courage and providing clear accounts of what had happened. She added: "Without this and the quick thinking of their friends to capture Grimshaw on video, we would not have been able to identify, locate and arrest him so quickly."
"I know this sentence won't take away the horrific memories they now carry, however, I hope it does allow them to move on from the horrible crimes that Grimshaw subjected them to."
