A PATIENT who sexually assaulted a female paramedic who was helping to treat him after he was taken to hospital in an ambulance has been jailed.

Neil Jones, 38, of Brookland Road, Pontymister, Risca, attacked the woman outside Newport’s Royal Gwent Hospital earlier this year.

Laura Shepherd, prosecuting, told Cardiff Crown Court how an ambulance crew had answered a 999 call after the defendant had suffered a head injury while drinking.

They took Jones to the Royal Gwent Hospital and he asked to go to the toilet upon his arrival there.

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He was taken to the lavatory in a wheelchair and started to make sexual comments about the victim on their way back to the ambulance.

Jones then reached out and touched her private parts as he was being lifted back on the vehicle.

Miss Shepherd said: “The complainant grabbed his hand and held his wrist and told him, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t touch me like that.’”

Frontline NHS staff are doing their very best for us

The prosecutor added: “She felt dirty and it did affect her. She said in her victim personal statement, ‘He took advantage of me for his own gain and satisfaction.’”

Jones told police after his arrest he drank eight cans of lager and suffered an epileptic fit which caused him to fall and injure his head.

He pleaded guilty to committing a sexual assault in February as well as being drunk and disorderly and possessing cannabis on two separate occasions that month.

Jones was also in breach of a suspended jail sentence imposed last year for affray.

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The court heard how the defendant had 36 previous convictions for 78 offences, including eight for violence but none for sexual matters.

Lowri Wynn Morgan, mitigating, said her client had been addicted to alcohol since the age of 16 and wished to apologise to his victim.

She added: “The defendant can’t remember what happened and it is out of character.”

Judge Richard Williams told Jones: “Your victim said that what you did was totally out of order. What you did was outrageous.

“Frontline NHS staff are doing their very best for us in what are the most challenging conditions known in peacetime.

“Your apology to your victim is far too late to make any material difference.”

Jones was jailed for 14 months and ordered to register as a sex offender for the next 10 years.

He will also have to pay a victim surcharge upon his release from prison.

Outside the court, a Gwent Police spokesperson, said: “Assaults of any kind on emergency service workers will never be tolerated by Gwent Police.

“Emergency service personnel come to work to protect and help those in need – not to be assaulted.”