A Pakistani immigrant has been jailed for at least two years for sex offences committed against a 15-year-old girl in exchange for vapes and cigarettes inside an Adelaide convenience store.
Ahmad Raza, 24, who came to Australia on a student visa in 2023, faced a judge-only trial in the South Australia District Court in December last year where he was found guilty of two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse, but not guilty of two counts of rape.
The court heard that in April 2023 Raza’s victim, who had turned 15 days earlier and had been in state care since she was 18 months old, visited several convenience stores on Hindley Street where she had previously prostituted herself for cash, cigarettes, vapes, drugs and alcohol, before arriving at the one where Raza was working.
She alleged that Raza, who she had never met, raped her orally and vaginally in the back room of the store, but Raza claimed the oral intercourse was consensual and denied vaginal intercourse. He also claimed the girl, who was wearing her school uniform, showed him a fake ID showing she was over 18.
Judge Nicolas Alexandrides found that forensic evidence proved vaginal intercourse did take place, but acquitted Raza of the rape charges as the victim had admitted engaging in the same acts at the same store with other workers and in about 50% of cases “initiated the transaction”.
“I am left with a reasonable doubt about whether [the victim] did not consent to sexual intercourse with the accused in exchange for cigarettes or vapes,” he said in his judgement.
But he also found Raza either knew his victim was under 17, or was “at the very least reckless as to that fact”.
In sentencing Raza last week Judge Alexandrides referred to a victim impact statement where the girl detailed feeling unable to wear certain clothes or a bathing suit at the beach due to the offending.
“She said that the incident made her feel unclean and it took her a long time to feel clean again. Her sleep was adversely affected, and she experienced nightmares which sometimes still recur,” the judge said.
“The experience was scary, and she now feels sadness when she has nightmares. She experienced fear when she learned that you were on bail.
“The outcome of the trial has caused her to lose trust in the system that is intended to protect her. RS feels unsafe when she is alone in a room with men. She has changed the way she interacts with individuals who share your ethnic background.
“She feels anger towards you. RS feels humiliated by the experience of attending court. She said it was embarrassing to tell her story over and over to strangers who asked the same questions. She feels let down and says that she would not go through the trial process again.”
The judge took into account Raza’s youth, lack of personal support in Australia due to his family being in Pakistan, and said that also Raza had made a false denial of wrongdoing during the trial he had since “exhibited genuine remorse”.
He noted Raza’s crimes had brought “great shame” on him and his family, that his father had died while he was on bail, and his mother was sick with diabetes and hypertension.
Judge Alexandrides sentenced Raza to three years and nine months’ imprisonment, reduce from five due to time spent on home detention bail, and set a non-parole period of two years, backdated to when he was taken into custody on December 23.
He also imposed an intervention order for the protection of the victim, preventing him from “assaulting, harassing, threatening, or intimidating [the victim], or approaching her, or communicating with her in any way”.
Header image: Hindley Street (Google Maps).
