GARETH RITTER AVOIDS JAIL OVER SEXUAL ASSAULT OF TEENAGER

Gareth Ritter, a former assistant head teacher at Willows Secondary school in Cardiff, has avoided jail for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old and making and distributing indecent images of a minor. Ritter, who appeared on the Channel 4 series Educating Cardiff, changed his plea to guilty on the assault charge, having already admitted three image-related charges. Judge Dyfed Lion Thomas handed him a 33-month sentence, suspended for 30 months, at Cardiff Crown Court on 4 November. The judge said he was reluctantly suspending the sentence. He gave no reduction for the plea, since Ritter denied the offence in court and made his victim testify.

The court heard Ritter offered his victim, then 17, a lift home after an event in Cardiff in 2015. He told her he needed to stop at a flat in Cardiff Bay, where he assaulted her on the balcony and inside. "You made comments there of how she looked, and how she dressed, which made her feel awkward and uncomfortable," Judge Dyfed Lion Thomas said. "You put your hand on her lower back, uninvited, and then moved it down to her backside, again uninvited." The victim moved into the living room, but Ritter followed and asked if she wanted to see the bedroom. Ritter, a married father of two, is from Great Tyrmynach Farm in Monmouthshire.

Judge Dyfed Lion Thomas also presided over Ritter's trial at Merthyr Crown Court. That hearing, the previous month, dealt with the assault charge alone. Educating Cardiff, the Channel 4 series in which Ritter appeared, followed staff and pupils at Willows Secondary school. His victim had already given evidence at the earlier trial before Ritter changed his plea.