Stuart Hesslewood

A County Durham man has been sentenced after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a girl. Stuart Hesslewood, 34, of Weston View, Peterlee, stood trial at Teesside Crown Court where he denied a single count of sexual assault. The jury returned a guilty verdict on the third day of the hearing.

The court heard that Hesslewood, a man of previous good character, touched the girl’s lower back and made contact with the top of her bottom with his finger. His barrister, Lee Fish, described the incident as “an isolated incident of inappropriate touching” and stressed that the defendant had led an otherwise stable and law-abiding life.

In a victim impact statement read to Durham Crown Court, the girl said she initially thought about the assault every day and feared it might happen again. She said she was nervous awaiting the trial outcome but felt relieved at the verdict and that people believed her.

Judge Aisha Wadoodi, who presided over the trial, told Hesslewood: “I’m satisfied that on the evidence I heard, you were correctly convicted by the jury.” She praised the victim’s impact statement, noting it was “commendable a child of that age has managed to say in an under-stated way the big impact this has had on her.”

A pre-sentence report assessed Hesslewood as posing a medium risk of sexual re-offending. The judge concluded he could be managed in the community and imposed a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months. The defendant must also observe a three-month electronically monitored home curfew between 7pm and 7am and complete 20 rehabilitation activity sessions.

Hesslewood will be subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order prohibiting unsupervised contact with any female under 16, and he must register as a sex offender, both for ten years. A five-year restraining order relating to the victim was also imposed. Judge Wadoodi warned that any breach of the orders would result in immediate imprisonment.