A man who repeatedly raped a client's 10-year-old son has been handed a three-year jail term after his crimes were uncovered during the child's counselling sessions.
The child revealed his ordeal during eight months of therapy and counselling sessions he was taking part in following the death of his mother.
His therapist at Al Amal Hospital, in Dubai, immediately contacted the boy's father, who himself alerted police.
The victim, from Egypt, told the therapist that the offender had raped him on a number of occasions over the course of a year at the boy's family home.
The child had been undergoing counselling since July 2017 and finally confided in the therapist the following February.
Dubai Criminal Court heard that the child was first sexually assaulted by the man at the family home in Al Qusais in December 2016.
The defendant, who worked with the boy's father at a farming company, had been asked by his colleague to give his four children haircuts and keep them company while he and his wife were away.
“After eight months of sessions at Al Amal hospital in Dubai, the therapist asked to meet with me to discuss an important issue,” said the boy’s father, 57.
On February 4, the father met with the psychologist who told him that his son had been raped by his hairdresser several times at his Al Qusais home.
During police questioning, the boy said that whenever his father and wife would go out and leave him and his three siblings, aged between 4 and 12, alone with the defendant, the hairdresser would rape him in his bedroom.
“I was sitting in my bedroom when he came and started chatting with me about school and other things, then he started touching me,” said the boy in court records.
“I tried to stop him but he was stronger, he then raped me, got dressed and left the room.”
He said he was raped seven more times, most recently in December of last year but he was afraid to tell his father.
He said that he was sometimes raped while his father was home, but in a different room.
The Pakistani offender, who was arrested on March 22 at Dubai International Airport while trying to leave the country, denied a rape charge in court in June.
He told the court that the boy’s father had dropped charges against him, and provided a document to support his claim.
Judges convicted him, however, and sentenced him to three years in prison to be followed by deportation.
