A man who sexually assaulted a young woman in Dublin city centre after following her around for half an hour as she tried to get away from him has been jailed for two years and three months.
Adel Kerai (26) had just arrived in the State five days before the incident, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.
He saw the 22-year-old woman waiting for her boyfriend outside a shop on O’Connell Street at around 11pm and decided he “fancied” her.
Kerai, of no fixed abode in Dublin 1, pleaded guilty to one count of sexually assaulting the woman on Henry Street on December 10th last. He is originally from Algeria and is seeking asylum here on the basis that he was persecuted for his political beliefs.
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The woman was on the phone to her boyfriend when Kerai approached and started speaking to her, managing to hang up her phone in the process, Garda Stephen Conran told Patrick McCullough BL, prosecuting.
The woman started walking towards the GPO and then turned down Henry Street in an effort to get away from Kerai, but he followed her and put his arm around her shoulders. She walked down to the end of Henry Street, still trying to lose Kerai. The incident culminated in Kerai trying to kiss the woman, putting his hand down her top and touching her genital area over her clothes before pressing his penis against her.
The woman tried to push Kerai off, but he was too strong, the court heard. At that point, her boyfriend phoned her back and a passerby came to her aid when they saw she was crying. Two gardaí on foot patrol also came on the scene.
Prosecution counsel said the entire incident lasted for 30 minutes, with portions of it captured on CCTV.
Kerai was arrested at the scene and has been in custody ever since. He had no passport or official documents to show gardaí and initially gave a different name and date of birth. He has four previous convictions from the UK, where he was living for one year prior to coming to Dublin.
A victim impact statement was handed into court, but not read out.
Keith Spencer BL, defending, said his client “fancied this young lady” and was under the misapprehension that she liked him too. He said Kerai had consumed alcohol that day which affected his judgment. The defendant wished to apologise unreservedly for his actions that day, the court heard.
Mr Spencer said Kerai intends to apply for asylum in this country and wishes to build a life for himself upon his release from custody.
Judge Martin Nolan said Kerai had “no right whatsoever to behave in this way” and that the entire encounter was “totally uninvited”. He said an aggravating factor was the way he approached the woman “totally without invitation, on a public street when she was going about her business”.
“For the injured party, this was very frightening,” he said. “How he approached this girl was particularly bizarre – to walk up to somebody and behave this way.”
He set a headline sentence of four years and reduced it to 27 months, taking mitigating factors into account. He backdated it to last December when Kerai went into custody.
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