Man jailed for sexual attack on woman

By Natasha Reid

A 23-year-old man has been jailed for three and a half years for a sexual attack on a woman as she walked home on the road where she lived in South Dublin.

Saif Waleed Al Hindawi argued that he was intoxicated after his first time drinking, pointing out that he was from a culture where alcohol is not used.

He also said that the woman had hit him first.

Al Hindawi, of no fixed abode, was before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday, where he pleaded guilty to sexual assault of the woman on May 23, 2024 on Churchtown Road.

The court heard that he refused to be tested for infectious diseases after his arrest, which meant that the woman had to wait a number of months to find out whether she had contracted anything from him after he bit her mouth.

Garda Michelle Maunsell told the court that gardaí responded to a report of an assault on a female by a male that night on Churchtown Road.

They arrived to the area and saw a car with flashing headlights.

The female passenger had blood on her face, and the male driver pointed to the footpath, from where a man approached with blood on his mouth over his teeth.

This was Al Hindawi.

The woman told gardaí that she was on her way home that evening.

She texted her husband as she got off the Luas around 10.30pm and began the seven-minute walk to her house.

She glanced back and saw a man in a hoodie.

He began walking on the road near her, and then right behind her.

She rang her husband to walk around to meet her, but as the phone was ringing, she came face to face with her attacker and he started shouting at her.

He raised his hand as if to hit her, but she turned and her backpack blocked him.

He shoved her to the ground with both hands and lay flat on top of her, pinning her left arm down.

She began screaming for help. She thought he was going to rape and kill her.

She said that all she could see was his massive teeth as he put his face on top of hers. He started biting as his mouth was open over her mouth.

She hit his head with her phone as hard as she could, and he yelped and shrieked.

She said that it felt as though he was trying to separate her legs to rape her.

She got a knee free and kicked him.

He looked away and then ran.

She was still on the phone to her husband as he arrived in his car. She got in and they rang the gardai.

However, the man came back and began banging on the passenger window and pulling the handle. The gardaí arrived and arrested the accused.

He had no English and was interviewed twice through a translator and made admissions.

He said that he was following directions on the phone, trying to get to the IPAS centre from the Luas.

He also said that the woman had hit him first.

Al Hindawi initially pretended to gardaí that he had fled Syria, that he was in the country since March awaiting a work visa, and was staying in a tent.

He said that he and his brother had arrived at a port here, having paid money to come from Syria.

However, it transpired that he was from Jordan, had arrived via Belfast, and had been here only five days.

He then said that it was his first time drinking, that he was intoxicated after five beers, and didn’t remember much.

He became emotional as he denied anything sexual.

The injured party entered the witness box to deliver a victim impact statement.

She recalled being treated in hospital for bites to her face and mouth and receiving a tetanus shot.

She also said she needed X rays for the injuries sustained when she was forcibly slammed to the ground, along with an MRI of her foot, which she had used to kick her attacker in self defence.

The woman also explained that she is still under the supervision of a doctor for PTSD and that, two weeks after the attack, she had to be prescribed a medication which left her constantly lethargic and unable to function.

She had to take 12 weeks off work following the attack, at a time when her career was ‘on an upward trajectory’ and she was working towards a promotion.

Now, however, she said she has lost her spark and is operating in survival mode.

“Over the last nine months, I have constant flashbacks,” she told the court.

“I’m no longer the confident woman I was. I’m a shadow of my former self. I live in constant fear of being attacked.”

She said she asked herself why she had walked home that night.

The only answer she could come up with was that ‘the old me’ felt safe to walk up the road where she lived.

“Will I ever feel safe again? I don’t think so,” she said. “I was violated on the street where I live, my home, a place where I should feel safe. I have to live beside the place where I was brutally assaulted….I have to pass by this exact spot every day, reliving the trauma.”

She said that she is a changed person, and has become short tempered with family and friends.

She said that since that date, when she’s lying in bed, the last thing she thinks of is “that man being on top of me”.

“I can’t get the image of his massive teeth out of my head as he bit into my face,” she said.

She explained that she has not slept one night without the aid of medication since the attack, and that she would likely need it for the rest of her life.

“I no longer feel safe where I live,” she said.

“We took out a large mortgage to buy a house in a Dublin suburb, that at the time had a low level of crime…a place we thought was a healthy environment to raise our children.”

She said that she has a teenage daughter, who is at the age where some freedom should be allowed to hang out with friends or walk to the shops.

However, the thoughts of her even walking to school is terrifying, she explained.

“The women of my community no longer feel safe to walk our streets alone,” she said. “This freedom, this right has been taken away from us.”

She said that the attack was not random, but was premeditated and calculated.

“This man lay in wait until he found a suitable victim,” she said. “He followed me and struck at just the right time when there were no other people around… He knew the exact place to strike.”

She spoke about the risk of being infected by a disease due to being bitten and explained that her attacker had refused to be tested for infectious diseases.

“He wouldn’t even grant me this comfort,” she said, explaining that she then had to go through the long testing process and wait three months until receiving any certainty.

Defence counsel said that his client came from a culture where the use or alcohol was not prevalent. He also said that his language difficulties would make prison more difficult.

He said that the defendant had applied for asylum five days before the attack and that he couldn’t imagine that he would be successful.

Counsel said that the civil authorities could impact his deportation.

Another option open to the judge, he said, was to suspend a portion of any sentence for a lengthy period on condition that he leave the country.

That might give some comfort to the victim, he suggested.

Judge Martin Nolan said that he probably would be deported at the end of his prison sentence, but that this was for the civil authorities to decide.

He jailed him for three and a half years.