A WHITEHAVEN teenager who was sexually assaulted by a man as she tried to sleep on a settee was left feeling scared and suicidal.

The impact of the attack by 66-year-old Arthur Dunn was spelled out at Carlisle Crown Court as a prosecuting barrister read aloud the impact statement of the victim. Dunn, of Lincoln Road, Hensingham, Whitehaven, denied wrongdoing.

But after a crown court trial, a jury found him guilty of two sexual assaults.

Outlining the facts, prosecutor Kim Whittlestone said the victim, in her late teens, was socialising in Cleator Moor with a friend on a day in 2022 when she bumped into Dunn at a local bar.

After socialising with him for a time, the teenager and her friend went on to Whitehaven but by 9pm that day they were back in Cleator Moor and returned to the same bar. Dunn was still drinking there.

At the end of the evening, the friend went home and Dunn told the victim she was welcome to stay at the property where he was staying.

“She felt there was no harm in returning to his home; she was intoxicated, and this would have been obvious to him,” said the barrister. At the defendant's home, the woman said she was tired, and Dunn got her a blanket.

She then lay down to sleep on the settee.

“He started touching her and asking if she was okay,” said Miss Whittlestone. To get away from his touching, the teenager rolled on to the floor.

When he walked away, she got back on to the settee and he returned and again began touching her, despite the teenager telling him 'No' and struggling to get away.

“He told her to not to tell anybody, and said she wanted it,” continued the barrister. In a state of distress, the teenager fled from the house in tears.

When the police interviewed Dunn, he accepted that he had invited the woman back to his house for more alcohol. He said the woman, after having more alcohol, and fallen asleep on the settee.

She then jumped up and ran from the house, he said.

In her statement, the victim said: “After what happened, what he did to me, I hated myself."

In a bad place, she had suffered depression and was struggling, she said. What Dunn did to her set her back a “huge amount".

“I felt dirty and embarrassed, and in the lowest place I have ever been in my life. I was at the point where I didn’t want to be alive anymore. I was angry all the time; I could not talk to anyone without shouting or crying.”

She was scared of walking in the street alone and felt such terrible anxiety that she not longer felt safe or happy, she said. Even 18-months after the assaults, she was struggling and suffering panic attacks.

But she had gone for counselling, she said, adding: “I am now ready to not let this horrible man ruin or determine my life.”

Brendan Burke, defending, said Dunn continues to deny assaulting the teenager. “There is an underlying condition of alcoholism,” said Mrs Burke. That took hold following the deaths of his son and his brother.

The defendant should have been sentenced last week but he was too poorly, having taken too much medication because of his “sheer terror” at the possibility of going to jail.

Judge Nicholas Barker told the defendant: “It was while she was trying to sleep, lying on that sofa, that you got up and began to pester her.” It would have been obvious to Dunn that the teenager was “not the least bit interested in any sexual interaction with the defendant, observed the judge.

“This was an entirely predatory act by you to her,” continued the judge. “At various stages, she did all she could to push you away or to move away from you. She got up and ran from the property.”

When the teenager arrived at a relative’s home, she was so distressed that she simply collapsed on to the floor, sobbing.

Dunn’s denials showed he did not have the courage to admit what he had done to a young woman. The judge jailed Dunn for five years, stipulating that he must serve two thirds of that term before he is eligible for release on licence.

He will be on the Sex Offender register for life.