Lecturer put on sex offenders’ register

The incident took place at a pub in Dumfries when the woman – in her thirties – was holding up a camera to take a picture of friends.
Speaking in court last Thursday, she said: “I felt the hands coming round me from behind and one hand was put on my breast – it wasn’t accidental.”
And she indicated Donald Thorburn, 55, in the dock and added: “I recognised him as a partner of a woman who ran a beauty salon.”
Thorburn, of Nunholm Park, Dumfries, had maintained a plea of not guilty to sexually assaulting the woman at Slipstream pub in the town by touching her breast over her clothes in April last year.
The victim went on to tell the court that her partner who was in the group being photographed was enraged and went over to Thorburn.
She said: “My partner pushed him and there was a bit of a kefuffle – and my partner was shown out for being aggressive.”
They then went to the police station and reported the incident.
Thorburn in evidence said he was there but it definitely wasn’t him who put his arms round her and added: “I don’t go around touching women up or groping them – they must have been mistaken.
“It was a bit of a shock when police came knocking at my door about this.”
He added that he recalled this other man coming over and shouting something, but he didn’t know what it was about and argued it was a case of mistaken identity.
Sheriff Brian Mohan, finding Thorburn guilty, pointed out that there was a clean record and said that this would seem to have been ‘a moment of madness’.
He deferred sentence for six weeks for background reports.