AN alleged sex offender has cleared his name of molesting a woman late at night in York city centre.

Andrew David Lee, 40, had no convictions before York magistrates convicted him, after a trial, of going up to a 21-year-old woman and touching her breasts on September 9.

They ordered him to do 86 days of sex offender treatment and three years' supervision as well as pay the woman £75 compensation.

But he appealed against his conviction to York Crown Court where Judge Geoffrey Marson QC, sitting with two magistrates, acquitted him.

Mr Lee, of Bell Farm Avenue, off Huntington Road, York, denied a charge of sexual touching.

The woman told York Crown Court she had been on her way home from a concert in Leeds at about 1.30am on September 9.

As she walked north along Gillygate, a man came up to her and grabbed both her breasts before walking away.

She immediately phoned police and gave them his description while he was still in sight.

Seventeen days later, she was sitting outside the Blue Fly café in New Street, when she saw a man by BhS.

"It was the gentleman who grabbed me," she said.

She again phoned police and trailed the man, who was arrested shortly afterwards.

Mr Lee's lawyers accepted he was the man outside BhS, but denied that he was the man in Gillygate and the bench said they could not be sure the two men were the same.

"(The woman) is a convincing witness," said Judge Marson, giving the bench's judgement. "She has no doubt in her own mind concerning the correctness of her identification."

But, he said, courts had to remember that witnesses could be mistaken, even when they thought they were not.

On September 9, the woman had described her attacker as having a bald patch and receding hairline.

But that description did not fit Mr Lee.

"He has a full head of hair. It doesn't appear to be receding at all and he has no bald patch," the judge said. There was no other supporting evidence.

Mr Lee spent five months as a convicted sex offender after his trial on January 21.

He left York Crown Court without a criminal record. He also no longer has to do the sex offender treatment or supervision or pay the compensation.