Dubai: A student has been accused of having sex with a girl aged under 14 whom he had been chatting with on messaging app Snapchat for three months.
The 19-year-old Emirati student, S.M., was said to have convinced the 13-year-old girl, also Emirati, to meet him outside her family home.
The student picked her up after she sneaked out through the washroom’s window and joined him for a car ride during which he had sex with her twice at 2am in April.
Prosecutors accused S.M. of forcing himself on the girl and having illegal sex with her two times in the car and molesting her.
The defendant failed to show up before the Dubai Court of First Instance where he was scheduled to enter his plea on Sunday.
The girl testified to prosecutors that she became acquainted to S.M. three months before the incident via the social media app Snapchat.
“I used to communicate with him using my grandmother’s phone. I constantly refused to go out with him. That night, he asked me out and I agreed to meet him … I sneaked out from the window so that my family would not know. He picked me up as he had a friend with him. I sat in the front passenger seat beside him while he drove. He stopped the car in a parking lot beside City Walk … his friend left us while he asked me to move to the back seat. We kissed and then he had intercourse with me. We dressed up and his friend came back to the car. His friend drove us back towards my house … then he had sex with me a second time while his friend waited outside the car. I returned to the house but my dad had discovered that I was outside and he reported to the police that I was missing. When we went to the police station, I told them what happened,” she claimed.
A police lieutenant claimed to prosecutors that the girl’s father reported her missing at 2am.
“Around 4am he returned to the police station to inform us that she had returned home. When asked about her absence, the girl told us what had happened. We summoned the defendant after the girl provided us with his contact number. During questioning, S.M. claimed that he met the girl through Snapchat and that he kissed her that evening in his friend’s car,” said the lieutenant.
Presiding judge Fahd Al Shamsi adjourned the case until the suspect is legally notified about the next hearing.