Photo has been used for illustrative purposes.

Hamza M Sengendo, Staff Reporter

A child abuser who pushed a victim’s mother to the ground and fled was on Monday sent to spend one year behind bars after which he will be deported.

The Asian defendant – a cleaner, 23 – made use of his presence with a girl, 11, in the lift to befriend her. He followed her inside her parents’ flat, shut the door and encroached on her, prosecutors explained to the jury.

The mother intercepted him and demanded to know what he was doing there. He claimed he had come to repair a balcony door. She was posing him questions when he pushed her and she slumped on the ground.

Prosecutors charged him with breaching the girl’s modesty and violating the flat’s privacy. They demanded he be awarded the toughest punishment applicable. The Criminal Court found him guilty of both charges.

On the record, at around 12.40pm the girl was with her mother in the swimming pool of a building in Dubai Marina when her mother told her to head to the apartment and have a meal.  She went and called the lift.

The defendant followed her inside the lift and greeted her. She entered the apartment without noticing the defendant had stalked her. She shut the door and saw him. She asked him the reason he entered. He kept quiet.

He locked the door with a key and pursued her inside her parents’ bedroom. He touched her and pestered her to follow him inside the building’s emergency exit stairway. She refused. He dragged her until the stairway.

He hugged and tried to buss her as she resisted and turned her face away. He asked her to give him her mobile number. When she refused, he wrote his mobile number on her arm. He took her back inside the apartment.

He locked the door again. He walked towards the bedroom. She heard someone knocking on the door and opened. It was her mother. He claimed, “The girl told me the balcony door broke down. I came to solve the problem.”

The mother narrated, “I had tried and failed to open the door because there was another key in the keyhole. I rang the bell. My daughter opened. She was perplexed. The defendant claimed he had come to repair the balcony door.

“I told him all our doors were okay and that he was a cleaner not a maintenance worker. I was contacting the police when he pushed me down and fled. I tried to run after him. He fled outside the building. I stopped because I was in swimwear.”