A Blairgowrie man who claimed his Gangnam Style dance moves led him to grope two women has been placed on the sex offenders register.
Derek Kerr said his over-enthusiastic interpretation of the horse-riding dance internet craze led him to touch the women during a night out at the Gig club in Blairgowrie last October.
The Perth and Kinross Council IT worker was found guilty after trial of two counts of sexual assault and returned to court for sentencing on Monday.
As well as being placed on the register for six months, and placed on supervision for the same period, Kerr (36) was sentenced to a community payback order including 100 hours of unpaid work.
The trial heard the women had tried desperately to escape Kerr’s unwanted advances on October 14 but he followed them across the crowded dance floor.
One of the women told Perth Sheriff Court Kerr failed to heed their repeated pleas to “back off”.
She said: “I just felt someone banging into me and trying to get close to us. When I saw it was him I just said ‘leave us alone’, but after that he kept trying to grind against us and getting really close, like dirty dancing.”
The final straw came when she was sent stumbling across the dance floor.
A doorman threw Kerr out and called the police.
They interviewed the woman and she gave a statement that the accused had “rubbed her left breast”.
The second witness also told the court that she saw Kerr with his hand on her friend’s chest and revealed that she had her own run-in with him.
She had been on the dance floor when she felt someone grab her leg, running his hand from her knee to her thigh.
“He didn’t get that far up my thigh because I realised what was going on,” she said. “I felt absolutely disgusted because I didn’t give him any indication that his attention was welcome.”
Kerr admitted he had been under the influence of alcohol but denied targeting the two friends, saying they were just “faces in the crowd”.
He said: “Some people might not have said it was dancing, but I was doing my best. The Gangnam Style song was on and I was doing the horse-riding moves, as well as jumping up and down.”
Kerr, of Balmoral Road, Blairgowrie, was found guilty of sexually assaulting the two women by grinding his body against theirs, as well as touching one on the breast and rubbing the other’s thigh.
Sheriff Eric Brown told him: “I did not find your evidence impressive.
“Having regard to the evidence of touching and the evidence as a whole I am left in no doubt this conduct was of a sexual nature.”