Security guard jailed for sexually assaulting teenager while shoplifting at Penneys – The Irish Times

A security guard who sexually assaulted a teenage girl after stealing a face mask and makeup brush from Penneys has been jailed for five years.

Abdul Rahman Mohammed (35), of Mountjoy Square, Dublin 1, was found guilty of sexual assault, false imprisonment and demanding money by threat at Penneys in Dundrum Shopping Center on December 4, 2022.

Mohammed was convicted by a jury on all three counts at a Dublin Criminal Court trial in February.

Det Garda Rachel Kiernan told the court that the injured party, who was 15 at the time, had gone shopping with two friends. The group went to Penneys and the girl put a makeup brush and a peel-off face mask in her jacket. As she was leaving, a security guard other than Mohammed approached her.

He asked her to come back to the store and tell them what else she had picked up. She was taken to a room on the premises. At some point she was left alone in the room with Mohammed.

The court heard that Mohammed told the girl: “Tell your friends to leave because if they are here they will get into trouble too.”

Mohammed accused the girl of hiding other items she had taken and asked her to take off her clothes. He had her strip down to her underwear and rubbed his hand on her thigh before making her turn around. The girl asked if she could put her clothes back on and Mohammed said she could.

He asked her if she would pay and she said she would, so he told her to wait for him outside Penney’s. They met in the mall parking lot and she agreed to send him money via Revolut. The girl thought she had to pay him €2.50 for the face mask and brush, but he told her it was actually €250.

The girl called her friends, but they didn’t have the money to pay him. At one point, a friend of the girl went to Penney’s where she was told that people caught shoplifting didn’t have to pay bail.

When the case came to court, Mohammed denied the offense and claimed his victim and her two friends were following him around the mall at the time. Prosecutors also argued that Mohammed jammed the surveillance camera in the room where he sexually abused the girl a week earlier to blur the footage.

In a victim impact statement submitted to the court, the girl said the incident had left her feeling anxious and depressed.

“I didn’t want to go out on the street because I might run into him,” she said, adding that she couldn’t close her eyes without seeing his face.

John Peart SC, defending, said “until now he has been the perfect citizen” and that the incident was “outside his normal character”. He said that while sexual assaults are always serious, this incident falls on the lower level of criminal offenses. He said his client is well respected in his community and has volunteered at a food kitchen in the past.

Mr Peart also said his client was a foreign national, so any time in prison would be “more distressing” for him than for a normal Irish citizen.

Mohammed has two previous convictions for traffic offences. Judge Orla Crowe imposed a sentence of five years, which she backdated to February when Mohammed was taken into custody.