An Iraqi refugee who sexually assaulted a teenage girl has walked free from a Queensland court with time served after a judge took his visa issues into account and spared him a mandatory prison term.
Salah Sulaiman Almuhama, 29, picked up the girl, who was wearing her school uniform, from a shopping centre in Toowoomba in early 2023 after meeting her on Snapchat and discussing a vape sale, drove her to a remote lookout, gave her $50, pulled her pants down and carried out his attack.
He then dropped the 14-year-old, who had told him she was 15, off at a hotel, and spent six months on remand after being arrested and charged with rape and exposing himself/indecent treatment of a child.
Almuhama faced Toowoomba District Court on Thursday where he pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent treatment of a child under 16, and one count of supplying a smoking product to a child, after his legal team made a successful submission to have the rape charge dropped, The Chronicle reported.
Judge Deborah Richards told Almuhama in sentencing he had treated the girl like a prostitute, taken advantage of her, and forced sex acts on her, but gave him just 12 months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years.
The court heard Almuhama was on bail at the time of the offences but has no criminal record, and moved to Toowoomba with his family after fleeing Baghdad in 2014 and living in a refugee camp until 2018.
Almuhama’s lawyers argued their client would suffer great hardship if deported, and his barrister asked for him to be spared a mandatory jail term for child sex offences.
Judge Richards agreed there were exceptional circumstances, citing visa issues, his lack of criminal history, no further charges, the six months spent in custody, and Almuhama’s early guilty plea.
The sentence of less than one year in custody means Almuhama’s visa will not be automatically cancelled, and if it is not revoked under review he will not be deported unless he commits another indictable crime within the next two years.
Header image: Almuhama outside court in 2024 (The Chronicle).
