A binge drinker carried out a bizarre sex attack on a complete stranger after they both collapsed in the same street at the same time.

Benjamin Colley lay down next to the unconscious 18-year-old boy and started taking off his clothes after they had both been taken to a nearby house by friends, Exeter Crown Court was told.

Colley did not know the victim. But the people who took the two men home did not realise it and so left them together to sleep off their alcoholic stupors.

They were horrified when they went to check them after a few minutes and found that Colley had pulled down both his own and the other man’s trousers and was sexually assaulting him.

Colley, aged 25, whose family home is at Ley Lane, Kingsteignton, but was homeless at the time, admitted sexual assault and battery.

He was ordered to receive intensive help with his problems of homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse as part of a two year supervision order by Judge Ian Lawrie, QC, at Exeter Crown Court.

He told him: ’This was a bizarre offence but was also disgraceful. You were drunk and had no idea what you were up to and when you got back to the flat you persisted in trying to molest this young man.’

Janine Wood, prosecuting, said the 18-year-old victim became very drunk during a night out in Exeter and collapsed on a piece of grass behind the John Lewis store.

Colley was also drunk and when he lay down next to the teenager his friends assumed they knew each other and gave them a both a lift to a flat nearby.

They left them in a bedroom but when they checked it a few minutes later they found Colley removing his trousers. They told him to stop but when they returned they found him stripping the victim and climbing on top of him.

He was thrown out of the house and hit one of the residents as he left. The victim was told what had happened when he sobered up.

He gave police an impact statement which said: ’I was very angry because this man was very close to committing a very serious sexual act without my consent.’

Joss Ticehurst, mitigating, said Colley has no idea why he committed the offence and accepted it was an act of total drunken stupidity.

ends