A VISITOR to Falmouth sexually assaulted a walker on the seafront just hours after following another woman around a service station car park.

Truro Crown Court, Cornwall, heard that in the earlier incident the 'scared' driver drove around the service station mini-roundabout seven times to try and shake off the man.

She was giving supporting evidence to the court on November 10, in a hearing involving Neil Shorter, aged 52, of Southcote Road, Reading.

He was not at Truro Crown Court to hear the evidence against him in person, in a trial relating to a sexual assault in Falmouth on April 7 this year.

The jury was told by Judge Robert Linford that Shorter was not there because he was not fit to stand trial as he had been diagnosed with dementia. Their duty was simply to decide whether he had carried out the assault and whether it was sexual. They found that he did.

The victim of the assault told the court via video link from the Old Bailey that she had been out walking along Falmouth seafront with her grandmother, along the lower path on Cliff Road, when she became aware of a man walking up very fast behind them.

"We moved to the right hand side of the path to some railings overlooking the sea," she said. "I was expecting him to walk past.

"I could feel someone behind me and hands on the lower part of my spine going from my lumbar spine to my lower spine. Two hands for about 10 seconds.

"The hands were moving down and I realised it wasn't my gran."

She said she then turned around and saw this stranger behind her who she did not recognise, who then started to walk away very fast. Her grandmother followed him shouting: 'You pervert, how dare you touch my granddaughter'.

She followed him up the path while her granddaughter filmed her assailant running away back towards Gyllyngvase Beach along Cliff Road. They called the police.

The victim said she was "very confused and very shocked" by what had happened.

The following morning police arrested Mr Shorter in Swanpool Beach car park on suspicion of stealing the hire car he was driving and sexual assault.

Another woman told the court that earlier that day at 2am she had been parked in Cornwall Services, off the A30, on her own when she noticed a man, now known to be Mr Shorter, going back to his car staring at her.

She felt uncomfortable so she moved her car to another part of the car park but he followed and parked parallel to her a few empty spaces apart and continued to stare at her.

"I was a little bit concerned because I was on my own and just the way he looked at me made me feel a bit agitated," she said.

The woman, who said by now she was very unnerved, drove around the car park to see if he really was following her, which he did. CCTV then showed her driving out of the car park and driving round a mini-roundabout seven times, with the other car right behind her before the other car drove off.

"I was quite scared on the phone to my boyfriend, I was crying," she said. "I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to go. That's why I went round the roundabout a number of times."

She then drove to the petrol station and while speaking to the attendant there the man in the car pulled up and stared at her before driving off. The police were called and a number plate was taken but it proved to be incorrect.

Mr Shorter was then arrested the following day.

The court was told that Mr Shorter was convicted of another sexual assault in Oxford in October last year, on a woman shopping in Tesco. During the court appearance for that offence he sexually assaulted a female security guard. He pleaded guilty to both charges.

Mr Shorter, who is currently in a prison hospital, will be sentenced on November 24.

His Honour Judge Linford told the jury that Mr Shorter would get a hospital order as he needed to be looked after and get the treatment he needed.