Newsagent worker spared jail for sex assault on girl
A NEWSAGENT worker convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old customer has been spared jail.
Mubbasher Nabi put his fingers down the side of the girl’s trousers and touched her inappropriately.
The married 29-year-old, who was found guilty of sexual assault after a trial, touched the girl in his van after she had gone with him to deliver a newspaper.
Sentencing Nabi to one month in jail, suspended for a year, Judge David Pugsley said he must give him a prison sentence because of the disparity in age between the defendant and the victim. He said: “It was a grave offence.”
But added: “In my view it’s to be seen as an illegitimate expression of your sexuality but not anything that could be said to make you a predatory, deviant risk.”
Nabi, of Church Street, Alfreton, was ordered to carry out 50 hours of unpaid work, pay £950 court costs and to sign the sex offenders’ register for seven years.
The jury had heard how the girl was with her boyfriend when she visited Ifty’s Food and Wine, in South Normanton, where Nabi worked, on March 31 last year.
Nabi, who had known the girl for a couple of years, asked the pair to go with him on a short journey to deliver a paper.
Abi Joyce, prosecuting, said the girl had agreed to go but her boyfriend had refused because he was waiting for his father.
After Nabi had delivered the paper, he parked his van and lit a cigarette.
Miss Joyce said: “He started asking to have a look at her top and saying she had something on her top and was trying to pull down her jacket zip. She was telling him to get off and was leaning away from him.”
The jury heard that Nabi had then tried to pull her closer and put his hand down her trousers, pulling her knickers, asking if they were thongs.
Miss Joyce said he then touched her inappropriately.
She said: “She tried to move further away and asked to be taken back to the shop.”
The jury heard how after the incident, the girl had gone back to the shop with her boyfriend and mother, who confronted Nabi.
He denied touching but said to her he had been “very foolish”.
But when asked in court what he meant by this, he said it was in relation to taking the girl on her own in the van.
Alistair Munt, in mitigation, said: “The author of the pre-sentence report says he does not display deviant sexual behaviour.”
Mr Munt said Nabi had a wife and a stable job. “He chooses not to take alcohol and does not abuse illegal drugs,” said Mr Munt.
