A 28-YEAR-old man who sexually assaulted a schoolgirl while she was playing in a wooded area in Kesgrave has been jailed for 12 months.

Jane Hunt

A 28-YEAR-old man who sexually assaulted a schoolgirl while she was playing in a wooded area in Kesgrave has been jailed for 12 months.

Richard Stean, who has previous convictions for indecent assault and indecent exposure, went into a den near Pilboroughs Walk where a ten-year-old girl was playing and pulled down her trousers, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

Stean had smacked and squeezed the girl's bottom before telling her “you can go now”, said Naomi Turner, prosecuting.

The girl had immediately run home and reported what had happened to her.

Stean of Newman Drive, Kesgrave admitted sexually assaulting the girl in May this year and in addition to being jailed he was ordered to sign on the sex offenders register and was banned from working with children for ten years.

Sentencing him Judge John Holt said a worrying aspect of Stean's offending was that three of his previous convictions, for which he had been given community penalties, had a sexual dimension.

The court heard that in 1998 and 1999 Stean had appeared in court for offences of indecent exposure and indecent assault and in 2004 he was convicted of causing alarm or distress after approaching two girls in a recreation ground in Melton and asking them the colour of their underwear.

Miss Turner told the court that the victim of the assault had been playing with friends in a copse on the edge of a cycle path in Kesgrave.

Stean had been loitering in the area and told the children he had a problem with the brakes on his bike before following the youngsters into a den where he asked the victim for a hug. He then grabbed hold of her and pulled down her trousers.

Richard Wood, for Stean, said his client was a family man who would benefit from receiving teaching on how to deal with children.