ABU DHABI // A man sexually assaulted a four-year-old girl he found playing on a slide at a park on Abu Dhabi's Corniche, a court heard yesterday.
Prosecutors told the Criminal Court that the parents of the Egyptian toddler were sitting at a cafe with friends when their daughter asked to go to an adjacent park to play.
"The area was well lit because there was a construction site nearby ... we could see her as she went up and down the slide," said her father, PN.
The girl briefly disappeared from her parents' view and they then heard her scream, so the parents and their friends ran to help.
"We thought she may have had a fight with another girl she was playing with earlier, so we waited in front of the slide for her but instead the defendant came out," said one of the parents' friends, M.
"He came down saying 'sorry, sorry', so I went to the stairs at the back which lead to the box and slide and called for her to talk to me," said the parents' friend.
He said he asked the girl if the man had been "playing" with her. She said he had been and indicated that the man had touched her inappropriately.
The girl's mother then took her to the bathroom and examined her, finding evidence that the girl had been molested. The girl also told her mother that the man had taken his shorts off.
The man, from Bangladesh, denied charges of sexually assaulting a minor, claiming that he was merely carrying the girl up the stairs to the slide after she asked for his help.
A verdict was scheduled for December 13.
