A Pakistani Uber Eats driver has been convicted of common assault for kissing a nine-year-old stranger on the cheek in the food court of a shopping centre south of Sydney.
International student Syed Talha Ahmad, 28, admitted kissing the girl, who was in her school uniform, at Stockland Shellharbour on August 5, but told police the act was acceptable in his culture.
Ahmad appeared in Port Kembla Local Court on Thursday where Judge Mark Douglass sentenced him to a 12-month supervised community corrections order, the Illawarra Mercury reported.
The court heard Ahmad was at Guzman y Gomez at about 11.30am to pick up an order, and was about a metre away from his victim, who was standing behind an adult known to her while they were ordering food.
Ahmad leaned over, touched the back of the girl’s head, rubbed the top and back of her head, and then bent down and kissed her on the right cheek.
He later made full admissions to police, but said it was “culturally accepted in Pakistan to show kindness in this manner”, and that he was “unaware that touching a child, including a kiss on the cheek was an offence in NSW”, according to court documents.
His defence lawyer told the court the incident was not sexually motivated or premeditated, and asked the judge to spare his client a conviction so he can continue his master’s degree in project management and business analytics and keep working as a food delivery driver.
The court heard Ahmad had no criminal record, had accepted responsibility, had gained “insight” into his offending, was an “excellent student”, and had recently completed a workshop on consent at the University of Wollongong.
Judge Douglass took Ahmad’s insight into his offending and engagement with rehabilitation into account, along with his mental heath, but also said the offending was of a serious nature.
“It was a kiss to a young girl’s face that he doesn’t know, a complete stranger,” he told the court.
Ahmad appealed the conviction, and will face Wollongong District Court in February next year.
Header image: The Guzman y Gomez restaurant where the incident took place (Google Maps).
