Security guard who sexually assaulted teen shoplifter gets five-year jail term

Girl (15) forced to remove her clothes

A security guard who sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl after she shoplifted a face mask and make-up 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 with menace on December 4, 2022, in Penneys at Dundrum Shopping Centre in Dublin.

Mohammed was convicted by a jury of all three counts following a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court trial in February of this year. Detective garda Rachel Kiernan told the court Mohammed had been a security guard at Penneys at the time of the offence.

The injured party, who was 15, had been out shopping with two friends.

The group went to Penneys and the girl put a make-up brush and peel-off face mask in her jacket. As she was leaving, a security guard who was not Mohammed approached her. He asked her to come back into the shop and tell them what else she had taken. She was brought into a room within the premises.

At one point, she was left alone in the room with Mohammed.

Mohammed told the girl: “Tell your friends to leave because if they are here they will be in trouble too.”

Mohammed accused the girl of hiding more items she had taken and told her to take off her clothes. He made her strip to her underwear and rubbed his hand on her thigh before making her turn around.

The girl asked whether she could dress again and Mohammed said yes. He asked her whether she would pay and she said she would, so he told her to wait for him outside Penneys. They met in the parking area of the shopping centre and she agreed to send him money via Revolut.

The girl thought she would have 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 Mohammed. At one point, one of the girl’s friends went to Penneys where she was told that people caught shoplifting don’t have to pay security.

When the matter came to trial, Mohammed denied the offence and alleged that his victim and her two friends had been following him around the shopping centre at the time.

During the trial, it was also the prosecution’s case that Mohammed had interfered with the CCTV camera in the room where he sexually assaulted the girl to make the footage blurry.

In a victim impact statement given to the court, the girl said the incident left her feeling afraid and depressed.

“I didn’t want to go outside to the street in case I came across him,” she said, adding that she couldn’t close her eyes without seeing his face.

John Peart SC, defending, said “until now he (Mohammed) has been the perfect citizen”. He stated that the incident was “outside his ordinary character”.

Mr Peart said that although sexual assault is always serious, this incident came within the lower level of offending.

He said his client was well regarded in his community and had volunteered at a food kitchen in the past.

Mr Peart also said his client was a foreign national, so time spent in prison would be “more onerous” for him than an ordinary Irish citizen. Mohammed has two previous convictions for road traffic offences.

Judge Orla Crowe handed down a sentence of five years. She backdated it to February, when Mohammed went into custody.