A college student has been found guilty of an indecent assault on a six-year-old girl in a toilet in a shopping mall in Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong.
The 25-year-old defendant was charged with indecent assault after he lured the girl with candies into a toilet cubicle in Metro City on August 28 last year.
The defendant was said to have approached the girl, who came to ride a bicycle on the shopping mall’s outdoor area. He allegedly told her he was asked by her domestic worker to take care of her for a while and that the maid had gone to the supermarket with the girl’s elder brother.
Police were alerted after the girl told her grandmother about the incident.
The man contacted police himself to “offer information” the following day, and was soon recognized by the girl in an identification parade. Yet he insisted he had only led the girl to use the toilet and stressed that he never entered the cubicle with her.
The defendant denied the charge at Hong Kong Magistrates’ Court on Monday, and made a counter-charge alleging that during interrogation by police investigators he had been “browbeaten to enter a confession.”
The judge dismissed the defendant’s account of the incident. The court also heard that the defendant intended to approach the girl on the day after the incident.
He will be remanded in custody until sentencing next month, pending his background, plus psychological reports and a trauma report about the girl, according to Apple Daily.