A Melksham man has been jailed for attacking a teenage girl in the street in the dead of night.
Scott Davis accosted the stranger as she walked home from a party on New Year’s Day 2022, putting on a ‘knight in shining armour’ act and claiming he wanted to protect her from “sick men”.
The 39-year-old first approached the 15-year-old in the A350 Beanacre Road underpass at around 5am – claiming to be an ex-firefighter and said he wanted to make sure she got home safely.
“He kept going on about other men [being a danger], I was agreeing with what he was saying; it wasn’t wrong. I was feeling like reassured”, the victim told detective Sarah Greenman in interview.
But things took a turn when Davis wouldn’t allow her to walk away from him in the Murray Walk area of Melksham. The girl said she felt “scared” and “didn’t know what was going to happen”.
In the Forest Road area, the former rugby player took her down an unknown lane – where he launched a sex attack lasting approximately two minutes. Davis grabbed her around the waist, pulled her closer and kissed her on the lips.
“You’ve got a good figure”, he told the girl – whilst proceeding to put his hands down her trousers and squeezing her buttocks. He raised her leg and held it up with one hand.
“I tried to leave, but I couldn’t really move because of how tight he was holding me around my waist”, she told police. “I was scared, I didn’t know what to do.”
After the assault, Davis repeatedly told the girl his full name and asked her to add him on Instagram – giving her the username “Scotty Bear”.
The defendant, of Portman Road, said it was a case of mistaken identity and did not give evidence at his trial at Salisbury Crown Court in September – where he was convicted by a jury.
On Friday (10 November), Judge Angela Morris jailed him for two years and ordered him to register as a sex offender for ten years. He’ll serve half the sentence behind bars.
He was also slapped with a ten-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
Davis will effectively swap prison places with his sister Stacey, who was jailed for leaving her one-year-old baby boy at home to die in a heatwave. She could be released as early as next month.