BY JAMES SIMONS
A gay bar manager has been jailed for 27 months for sexually assaulting an 18 year old whilst asleep in his bar.
Robert Ashton was captured on CCTV whilst he performed lewd acts on the teenage boy who was ‘out for the count’, but thought there was ‘unspoken consent’ because that’s ”the way it is when they first come out’. You let them take the lead, he stated”’. Ashton said they had been drinking and flirting that evening which led him to believe that the teenage boy wanted some of him.
Scenes from the disturbing footage shows the bar manager pulling down the boys trousers, smoking a cigarette as he molested him, shaking, slapping and prodding him to confirm if he was asleep or awake. In actual fact, the boy was completely dead to the world and unaware he was being used as an object of sexual gratification. However, the gay boss believed the boy to be ”consenting and pretending to be asleep”
The incidence affected the boy greatly, who said he had subsequently began drinking heavily and even contemplated suicide. When jailing him, the judge said the bar manager should have desist when the boy was asleep, and pointed out that the incident had a prolonged and profound effect on the boy. It probably did, but both the defendant and victim were pretty foolish in their operation that evening. First of all, how on earth a 37 year old man will not know that consent must be clear and beyond dispute or the entire duration of a sexual activity is beyond any reasonable thinking. He could not control himself, but rather forced himself on the unsuspecting 18 year old who himself was naïve and stupid to think he can indulge in drinking in a gay bar until the point of falling asleep. This still did not give the bar manager any right to think he can sleep with him without any clear consent.
