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AN alcoholic who sexually abused a sleeping teenage boy has been jailed for 16 months.
Steven Bays first groped the youngster before performing a sex act on him.
The 51-year-old was told he must register as a sex offender for 10 years and would face restrictions over contact with children.
Tessa Hingston, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court how the 16-year-old was staying at Bays’s flat in May.
She said he awoke in the early hours to find the man, who was estranged from his wife of 17 years, had undone his trousers and was interfering with him.
The victim did not immediately react, a not uncommon reaction in such cases, said Ms Hingston.
Bays then carried out a sex act on him for a few seconds, before touching him again. The teenager left the room and the defendant pretended to sleep.
From the bathroom he heard Bays castigating himself, calling himself an ‘idiot’.
The youngster then left the flat, going first to the police point in west Swindon, which was unmanned, before walking a couple of miles home in the middle of the night.
A forensic examination found Bays’s DNA and saliva in the boy’s pants.
Bays initially denied any wrongdoing. “He said he was heterosexual and had no interest in males,” Ms Hingston told the court.
She said he also told officers he did not have a drink problem but was getting through “about a third of a bottle of whisky” a day.
The court heard that the boy suffered trauma which left him unable to study and he failed his GCSEs.
Bays, of Longstock Court, Eastleaze, pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault.
Rob Ross, defending, said his client was filled with remorse and had since made attempts on his life.
“He is horrified by what he did, he accepts it took place,” Mr Ross told the court.
“Mr Bays accepts this must have had a dreadful affect on the young man.”
He said Bays was now going to narcotics anonymous, and had been off the drink for a month, having drunk to excess every day since he was 19 years old.
Jailing him, Judge Peter Blair QC said “You have heard read to the court the psychological damage you have caused to this young man by what you did. It was a short period of time when you were committing these three offences but it is going to have, as you have heard, long lasting and dramatic effects on the boy.”