Groping on bus lawyer fined £3500

An international lawyer who groped a young woman sitting next to him on a bus travelling from the Capital must pay £3500 and has been put on the sex offenders register for five years.

Hugh Wotherspoon, a 54-year-old married dad, was also put under three years’ probation supervision.

Wotherspoon was arrested at Tebay Services on the M6 last August after the German-born woman told the driver he had been fondling her thigh on the journey from Edinburgh.

At Carlisle Crown Court yesterday, his barrister Madeleine Wolfe said Wotherspoon admitted being “an unconventional character”.

She said Wotherspoon had resigned from his highly-paid job following his conviction. He was also likely to be thrown out by the solicitors’ professional body.

During the trial the woman, who can’t be named, said she was left “shocked and shaken”.