A man has been spared from being sent to jail for 18 months over a violent indecent assault on a woman in St Julian’s over eight years ago.
Jurgen Zahra, from Żejtun was given "one last chance" by the Appeal's Court, who suspended his sentence for four years and placed him under a three-year supervision order.
The now 28-year-old had been charged with attempted rape, violent indecent assault, holding the woman against her will and causing her slight injuries while committing an offence which offended public morals.
The court heard how in the early hours of June 26, 2011, the woman, from Hungary, was walking near the Regional Road tunnels, down the hill towards San Ġwann, when she was overtaken by a car driven by the accused.
Mr Zahra, who at the time was allegedly under the influence of drink, drove slowly alongside her, pestering her and at one point grabbed her hand.
The terrified woman ran away, but Mr Zahra managed to creep up upon her again, placing a hand across her mouth to stifle her cries and avoid unwanted attention from passers-by.
After hitting her several times on the head, he removed her trousers and was struggling to remove her underwear when she finally succeeded in breaking free.
The court heard how people who happened to be walking past heard her frantic cries and, upon spotting the assailant, began to scream at him to let her go.
It was only then that Mr Zahra gave up on his victim, ran to his car and sped off. The passers-by managed to take down his number plate and alert the police.
He was found not guilty of attempted rape as there was not enough evidence of the intention to rape the victim, a fact required by law for the attempt to subsist.
However, the accused was found guilty of the violent indecent assault and all the other charges filed against him and was given an 18-month prison sentence.
The man, now 28 with a stable job, was 20 years old when the case happened and has a relatively clean criminal record, save for a number of traffic contraventions, leading Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera to give him “this one last chance”.
She also placed him under a supervision order for three years.
The Appeal’s Court accepted his argument that the effective jail term was excessive when considering that he had a relatively clean police record.
“What the accused did was condemnable and cannot be tolerated in a civil society, especially when an innocent person walking in the street ended up attacked in this violent manner in an attempt to succumb to sexual acts," the Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrara ruled.
"The incident certainly had an impact on the victim as well as on the country since the victim caught the next flight out of Malta.
“The charges are very serious but the court cannot ignore the fact that the accused was only 20 years old at the time so it is going to give him this only chance to reform by suspending the imposed jail term for a period of four years,” the Appeals Court.
He was also fined of €1,150 and the payment of court expenses amounting to almost €1,650.
Lawyers Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri appeared for the man.