Judge wrong to deem sexual assault in pub as 'practical joke', appeal court rules

A judge was wrong to clear a man who touched a woman’s bottom in a pub of sexual assault after the act was initially deemed a “practical joke”.

Steven Harper was convicted of assaulting a woman at an Edinburgh pub in December 2022 but was cleared of any conviction of “sexual assault”.

The Sheriff’s Appeal Court in Edinburgh this week reversed the original judgement and convicted him of sexual assault.

The court heard how the woman went to the bar and felt someone touch the left cheek of her bottom with a “degree of force”.

Harper’s defence maintained he had “mistakenly thought that the woman was his friend” and that his intention was to “play a practical joke by touching the woman he thought to be his friend on the bottom.”

The sheriff ruled that the assault was not sexual because “it was a practical joke” and took into account the level of intoxication of the man.

Harper was charged under the Sexual Offences Scotland Act and fined £300.

However, appeal sheriffs Nigel Ross, Catherine Dowdalls KC, and Gillian Wade KC ordered that Harper’s conviction be recorded as a sexual assault.

In the judgment, Sheriff Principal Wade wrote: “The sheriff erred in placing undue weight on the respondent’s motive and insufficient weight on sexual autonomy.

“Committing a crime for a joke is no defence.

“The sheriff considered that the excess alcohol led to the mistaken identity, not that it excused the respondent’s behaviour.

“However, he erred in concluding that it could, in the circumstances of this case, negate the sexual act of touching someone on the bottom, in the manner which occurred.”

Harper will now be placed on the Sex Offenders Register for five years.