Locations
Blackthorn Road, Didcot, OX11
Description
Image: Crown Prosecution Service, Thames Valley Police
A convicted groper continued to protest his innocence as he was jailed for almost a year.
Mitigating on his own behalf, Artig Emmanuel, 24, said of a set of offences committed against five women in Didcot in November 2020 for which he was convicted in September: “We do not even have any evidence that any of these things happened.”
He told Oxford Crown Court on Friday that there was ‘no DNA’ and ‘no identification’ evidence collected by the police, who obtained CCTV footage of him in the area around the time of the attacks.
“They [the prosecution] just skipped straight to trial,” he said – claiming that, had the victims been black rather than white, ‘it would have been different’. “White women, you’ve got some privilege,” he said.
Appearing to accuse the justice system of racial bias, he told Judge Maria Lamb that he had wanted a ‘diverse jury’ and cited research that a more diverse jury was ‘less likely to convict a black person’.
He criticised coverage of his second trial in the media and, in particular, reporting of the fact he quoted the title of Shaggy’s 2000 hit ‘It Wasn’t Me’ in addressing the jury.
“That is an unimportant point. Don’t put clickbait over the truth,” said Emmanuel, who during the second trial also cited the title of rap star Skepta’s single ‘That’s Not Me’ and quoted the words of Old Testament figure King Solomon that ‘what is lacking cannot be counted.
Sentencing him to 48 weeks’ imprisonment, Judge Lamb noted that Emmanuel had told the probation service that he ‘would not cooperate’ with conditions attached to a community order or suspended sentence.
“I am sorry that the pre-sentence reports make clear that you do not wish to avail yourself of the help that the probation service could offer to you,” she told the defendant, who spent more than 200 days in prison on remand.
“I do not think that it would be appropriate to impose a sentence of community service here in any event.
“These offences are too serious for that. They attract a prison sentence and it wouldn’t be right to seek to impose a community service order, you having spent so much time in custody already.”
He will be on the sex offender register for 10 years.
Emmanuel, of Blackthorn Road, Didcot, was convicted in February of sexually assaulting a female dog walker in Wantage in 2021. He was subsequently refused permission by the Court of Appeal to challenge his convictions.
In September, he was convicted of five counts of sexual touching. He had slapped or touched five women over two nights in November 2020.