Penney’s security guard who sexually assaulted teenager jailed for 5 years

By David O’Sullivan

A security guard who sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl after she shoplifted a face mask and make-up brush from Penney’s 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 Penney’s at Dundrum Shopping Centre.

Mohammed was convicted by a jury of all three counts following a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court trial in February this year.

Detective Garda Rachel Kiernan told the court that Mohammed was a security guard at Penney’s at the time of the offence.

The injured party, who was aged 15 at the time, had been out shopping with two friends.

The group went to Penney’s and the girl put a makeup 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 down to her underwear and rubbed his hand on her thigh before making her turn around.

The girl asked if she could dress again and Mohammed said yes.

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 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 Penney’s where she was told that people caught shoplifting didn’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 case that Mohammed had interfered with the CCTV camera in the room where he sexually assaulted the girl a week prior to make the footage blurry.

In a victim impact statement handed in 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 has been the perfect citizen” and that the incident was “outside his ordinary character.”

He said that though 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.

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