A 42-year-old Syrian man has been accused of sexually molesting a 10-year-old girl at a swimming pool in Vienna after the child complained the man had grabbed her inappropriately.
Police say the incident occurred on Saturday at the Hütteldorfer Bad swimming pool in the Austrian capital. The 42-year-old Syrian is said to have grabbed the buttocks of the 10-year-old as she and her friend were about to go on one of the pool’s water slides. The mother of the girl called the police who confirmed on Monday that the asylum seeker had been reported for sexual harassment, Die Presse reports.
The mother of the young girl said that the man had approached her daughter and her daughter’s friend at the water slide and the man’s groping panicked the young girls who fell down the slide as a result.
The mother attempted to speak to the head of the swimming pool who told her that there was no point in calling the police because it was her word against that of the asylum seeker who denied the assault.
“My daughter, her friend and the friend’s family left the pool, so I did not know about the incident and waited for my daughter at the parking lot,” the mother told Die Presse.
“Just as I came, the man went out of the pool and my daughter recognised him,” she added.
The asylum seeker was taken into custody by police. But so far, police have been unable to interrogate him as he does not speak any German and no interpreter was available on the weekend. Prosecutors say they will be bringing charges of sexual harassment against the man.
The alleged assault is just the latest sex attack to occur at swimming pools in Austria. The most well-known case occurred in late 2015 in Vienna when 20-year-old Iraqi Amir A. brutally raped a 10-year-old boy at the Theresienbad swimming pool saying the incident had been a “sexual emergency”.
Austrian swimming pools have tried a variety of tactics to combat the problem of the sex attacks. One swimming pool in Mödling attempted to ban asylum seekers from the facility altogether but was met with heavy resistance from pro-migrant activists and left wing supporters.
Another pool in Perchtoldsdorf posted signs in Arabic telling migrants about the appropriate way to behave.
In Switzerland, a pool attempted to limit the number of asylum seekers in a pool at one time, but this was also slammed by left wing supporters who said the policy was like “apartheid”.
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