Former Smeaton publican Caleb Consiglio faces court for sexually assaulting two women at a wedding

A former Central Victorian publican who sucked a woman’s nipples and groped another woman’s breasts without consent has faced court.

Former Smeaton publican Caleb Consiglio has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault. Photo: Facebook

A former Central Victorian publican who assaulted two women at a wedding has been ordered by a court to donate to an organisation dedicated to helping LGBT people – not victims of sexual assault.

The man — who works in education — also avoided a conviction despite prosecutors maintaining the damage he caused to his victims outweighed the difficulties of his having a criminal record.

Caleb Jordan Consiglio, the 27-year-old one-time owner of the Cumberland Hotel in Smeaton, faced Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual assault.

The court heard that during a wedding that took place at a Melbourne bar in 2022, he pulled down the shirt of one woman and sucked her nipple without her consent, and grabbed and squeezed another woman’s breast before also pulling her shirt down.

Consiglio was arrested the following month and explained to police he was “motor-boating” a friend’s chest when another woman said “Do me, do me”.

The incident bringing about one of his charges — which was caught on CCTV — occurred later, he said, and he felt he had the woman’s consent from earlier.

Caleb Consiglio. Photo: Facebook

At the time, Consiglio did not recall sucking one victim’s nipple, nor touching the other victim, the court heard.

In a statement read to the court, one victim said she was “severely affected” by the offending, which resurfaced trauma from earlier in her life and caused her to have panic attacks.

Consiglio’s lawyer put forward that her client went “well and truly over the boundary” and that he was “remorseful and ashamed and embarrassed”.

She said the offending made the wedding a “night to remember for all the wrong reasons”.

Prosecutors argued the charges warranted a conviction, but magistrate Marita Altman said that the process of being brought to court was in itself “sufficient specific deterrence”.

She described the offending as a “terrible and in many ways catastrophic lapse of judgment”.

“I have every belief that we won’t see you again,” she told Consiglio.

Ms Altman put Consiglio, who is gay, on an adjourned undertaking for two years without conviction and ordered that he donate $1000 to Minus18, a LGBT group whose stated goal is to “tackle social isolation by creating spaces where LGBTQIA+ young people belong”.