Mall security guard who sexually assaulted 3-year-old girl after taking her to unmonitored stairwell could walk free in two years
A security guard has been sentenced to at least two-and-half years in prison after he kidnapped and indecently assaulted a three-year-old girl at a Sydney shopping center.
30-year-old Mohammad Hassan Al Bayati touched the youngster's underwear and exposed his penis to her after luring her to a stairwell away from surveillance cameras at the DFO Homebush in December 2016, Daily Mail reports.
NSW District Judge John Pickering jailed the guard for four and a half years with a minimum sentence of two and a half years, and said the girl had been "quite remarkable" to report the crimes.
A week before Christmas in 2016, Al Bayati was responding to a report that the girl was unattended and distressed at the center's playground when he took her by the hand and led her to a fire exit stairwell in an unmonitored area.
After receiving sexual gratification about eleven minutes later, Al Bayati walked the child back to the playground.
He saw her mother waiting along with the child's seven-year-old sister, who was crying because she couldn't find her younger sibling.
Shockingly, Al Bayati berated the mother for leaving her daughter unattended.
"The gall of the offender to lecture the mother about the dangers and risks of leaving her in the play area when he ended up being the greatest risk is one of the most curious parts in this matter," Judge Pickering said.
"Any mother should be entitled to leave their children in a busy shopping center and not have any belief or expectation that someone who is actually there to look after the interests of people shopping in the center will then create harm in themselves."
The mother had gone shopping for Christmas presents when she left the then-three-year-old at the DFO play area with her seven-year-old sister.
Later that day, the child victim told her father Al Bayati showed her his "needle" and "tried to kiss my bum bum", before the parent alerted authorities.
Judge Pickering said the girl displayed "remarkable resilience through her courage" to describe the harrowing incident to her parents, police as well as to the court.
"It's quite remarkable because I think of how many three-year-olds would be able to articulate what happened to her," the judge said. "[She] did her best to explain what happened but again it is an enormous ask on a three-year-old to outline precisely what happened."
Furthermore, the judge sympathized with the girl's parents, who previously stated they were suffering mental health issues after the incident.
A jury was unable to reach a verdict in Al Bayati's first trial in June 2018. However, he was finally found guilty by a judge in May this year.
"Our peaceful family life was destroyed and will never be the same again," the girl's mother said in a victim impact statement in an earlier hearing. "We are so proud she was able to tell the police, however it was a dramatic event for her."
Al Bayati claimed he was taking the girl to her mum who was in the toy shop, and that the route via the fire exit was the shortest path there.
But Judge Pickering called the explanation "unusual in the extreme" and warned it was futile to think logically about why someone would take a happy child away from public view and down a fire exit.
"People who commit these kinds of acts process way outside the normal thought processes and there is no point trying to make sense of an act of this nature," he said.
That said, the girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has since received counseling and her recovery would take several years, according to her mother.
Meanwhile, Al Bayati will spend a minimum of two years and six months in prison on charges of kidnapping with intent to obtain sexual gratification, act of indecency and indecent assault.
He will be eligible for parole in 2021.