Engineer cleared of molesting teenage girl

Dubai A civil engineer has been cleared of sexually molesting a 13-year-old schoolgirl by hugging and kissing her when he shared accommodation with her family.

Citing lack of corroborated evidence, the Dubai Court of First Instance acquitted the 36-year-old Filipino civil engineer, N.J., of any wrongdoing.

Records said the Filipina girl was chatting with her friend on Facebook’s video-call when her 35-year-old father, according to records, overheard her telling a friend that she had been allegedly kissed and groped by their former housemate [N.J].

N.J. firmly denied the accusation, telling the court, “I did not do such a thing.”

Prosecutors said the suspect abused the fact that he shared the same residence with the teenager’s family and molested her. He breached the girl’s modesty by hugging and kissing her against her will a number of times.

The engineer said the girl’s father fabricated the allegations and brought in the accusations against him out of malice.

The father said he was in the sitting room when he heard his daughter telling a friend on Facebook that she had been kissed before.

“When my daughter and her friend where discussing sex, I overheard her saying that someone had kissed her before. I was shocked because she was still young. Immediately I asked her to quit the chat. When I asked her about the content and when did that happen, she cried and did not speak. Then she ran in to the kitchen and wrote on a napkin ‘I am afraid of what happened in Bur Dubai’. She alleged that N.J. molested her. She claimed that he constantly kissed her like grown-ups and asked her not to tell anyone,” claimed the father.

In his defence argument before the court, the engineer countered all the allegations against him.

Prosecution records said when the father took his daughter to a public hospital to be examined by a psychiatrist, he was instructed to report the matter to the police.

The teenager claimed that their former housemate hugged and kissed her for the first time in the elevator when she returned from the grocery. The second time he did it, she alleged, was while she was studying in the sitting room and her parents were away.

According to the primary verdict, the court deemed prosecutors’ evidence as insufficient enough to indict the suspect.