March 2017 Taunton sex creep snuck up to girls and stroked them on Bridgwater to Taunton bus A Somerset sex creep who felt compelled to sneak up to girls on buses and start stroking them has had his jail term almost halved by senior judges. David James Best, 46, sat behind one victim on the bus from Bridgwater to Taunton, London’s Appeal Court heard. The frightened girl was reduced her to tears as Best started “walking his fingers up and down her arm like a spider.” He also groped the leg of a second teenage girl while she was dozing on another Bridgwater to Taunton bus. He was arrested in February last year after the second victim took a photo of him on her phone and CCTV footage linked him to the first incident. Cops then discovered that he had a record for similar offences. He had previously been sentenced for groping women on a bus, a park bench and at a railway station. Best, of Lyngford Place, Taunton, was jailed for three and a half years at Taunton Crown Court in July last year. He pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault. But Lord Justice Treacy, sitting at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, cut Best’s sentence to two years at the appeal hearing on Wednesday, March 8. The judge, sitting with Judge Richard Griffith-Jones and Mr Justice Gilbart, heard that Best’s creepy behaviour never involved a serious stand-alone sex attack. He seemed unable to stop himself touching women uninvited, despite being warned several times. He had been on licence for similar offences when he interfered with the two girls on the bus, the judge said. “It seems clear that these young girls travelling alone on buses were targeted by him,” he added. However he ruled that the offences had been placed in too serious a category by the judge who jailed Best. “We have come to the conclusion that the appropriate sentence would have been 12 months consecutive on each count, making a total of 24 months,” he concluded.