Dubai A language teacher won his appeal after a court reduced his three-year imprisonment to one year for molesting an 11-year-old girl while giving her a private lesson at her parents’ house.
In April the Dubai Court of First Instance jailed the 43-year-old Pakistani teacher, H.R., for three years for groping the Pakistani girl while teaching her Arabic in February.
Records said the defendant had threatened to fail the schoolgirl if she did not allow him to touch her.
The defendant appealed the primary ruling before the Appeal Court where he pleaded not guilty and sought to be acquitted or have his punishment reduced.
When he defended himself before the appellate court, he pleaded not guilty, contending that the 11-year-old had asked him to touch her while they were alone in the room during the private lesson.
“She is the one who asked me to do so while I was teaching her,” H.R. argued in court.
On Wednesday, presiding judge Saeed Salem Bin Sarm overturned the three-year jail sentence and reduced it to one year in jail on grounds of leniency.
The accused will be deported following the completion of his punishment.
The girl told prosecutors that the defendant threated to fail her in Arabic if she did not allow him to touch her.
“I pushed him away when he touched me the first time. He threatened to fail me if I did not allow him to grope me … I got scared and he molested me for 10 minutes. When my mother suddenly walked into the room, she scolded him. He had touched my shoulder five times before that incident,” the girl said.
The girl’s mother said she went into the room to check on her daughter because she had not heard her for a while.
“I used to hear them talking during the lesson. When I walked into the dining room, the suspect was groping her,” she testified.
Wednesday’s ruling remains subject to appeal within 30 days.
