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PA Media
David Stroud made sexually motivated comments to a woman on a train
A man has been given a 12-month community order after being convicted in a first-of-its-kind sex-based harassment prosecution brought by the British Transport Police.
David Stroud grabbed a woman's hair and asked if he could kiss her on a train to London from Hastings, East Sussex.
He was arrested shortly after a new law banning harassment motivated by a person's sex came into force.
The 44-year-old, from Dartford in Kent, had pleaded guilty at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court in May.
In a statement made during the first criminal sentencing of its kind in England and Wales on Tuesday, the woman said she felt "trapped, powerless and petrified".
"I always feel the need to have company when I leave the house now," she said.
"I can never truly go anywhere on my own, simply because I'm a woman."
The court previously heard Stroud sat next to the woman, who was on the phone to her boyfriend at the time, on the train.
He was "constantly leaning" on her and called the woman "magical", it was told.
Stroud then grabbed her hair, which the victim "perceived to be sexual", the court also heard.
In her statement, the woman - who detailed she was a childhood sexual abuse survivor - said the incident left her "paralysed with fear".
She had told Stroud to stop, but he continued talking to her before asking: "Can I kiss you?".
The woman replied "absolutely not", the court heard.
