A SEX offender whose actions led to his victim “reliving a woman’s worst nightmare” has failed in his bid to have his prison sentence reduced.

Thomas Joshua Bird, 30, was jailed for 12 years with an extended six years on licence in January after a York jury last year convicted him of sexual assault, two attempted sexual assaults and failure to give police his phone’s PIN number.

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They heard how Bird, wearing a face mask and dressed in black, had grabbed a woman from behind and attacked her as she was talking her daily walk in a North Yorkshire village.

He had been cruising the area looking for a woman to attack and had followed another woman until she met a man.

The Northern Echo: Still of Thomas Joshua on the prowl for a woman to sexually attack

Bird applied for leave to appeal on the grounds that he claimed the woman’s suffering as a result of his crime wasn’t so great that it justified so long a sentence .

Three judges sitting at the Court of Appeal rejected his application.

“She was reliving every woman’s worst nightmare on a regular basis,” said the Recorder of Leeds, Judge Guy Kearl QC, announcing the court’s decision.

As the woman watched via a video link, he described how she was having terrifying flashbacks of the incident, suffering nightmares and fearful of leaving her home, among other difficulties.

Ten months after Bird attacked her, “she is constantly on high alert and wishes she was dead,” the judge said.

She was also suffering physically.

Bird, formerly of Fairfield, Knottingley, was jailed for 12 years, plus six years’ extended parole.

He was initially refused leave to appeal by a single appeal judge who read his application.

The Northern Echo: Still of Thomas Joshua on the prowl for a woman to sexually attack

But the sex offender told his barrister Chris Moran to argue his case before three appeal court judges.

Mr Moran said Bird accepted he was so dangerous he could not argue against having an extended prison sentence.

But he claimed Bird had been sentenced as though the woman had been tortured or more severely sexually assaulted than she was.

Judge Kearl said only the woman’s struggles and resistance had stopped Bird from completing what he was trying to do to her.

 

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