Zane Wittkowski: Fake penis pervert grabbed shopworker’s bum
Sleazy shopper: A dirty deviant wore a phallic object in his pants at The Gateway and squeezed a shopping centre worker’s bottom.
South East
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A slimeball with a sordid sexual past who squeezed the bottom of a store worker and paraded around a shopping centre with a fake penis hanging out of his pants has fronted court.
Zane Darian Wittkowski scared the centre customers and “froze” the shop assistant with fear with his disgusting drug-fuelled bizarre behaviour.
The Frankston 27-year-old roof tiler also continually drove while disqualified with vials of GHB in his car.
Wittkowski pleaded guilty to two sexual activity directed at people charges, sexual assault, drug, driving and bail breach charges at the Frankston Magistrates’ Court on Monday.
As a convicted sexual offender he was also guilty of loitering around children.
The court heard a 22-year-old female was chatting to a colleague in Narre Warren in March 2019.
Wittkowski came up behind her, grabbed her on the bottom, squeezed and looked her in the eye while saying “sorry”.
The woman was frozen in fear, in shock and couldn’t move, and her colleague had to report the incident to management and police.
When he was later arrested Wittkowski denied sexually assaulting anyone.
In October last year he was off his head on drugs when he went to The Gateway Shopping Centre in Langwarrin.
Once inside the Coles supermarket he followed two women, one of whom he knew, while rubbing a large penis-shaped object hidden in his pants.
They left, but he continued walking after them, leading to them being so scared they asked strangers to walk them to their vehicle.
Undeterred, Wittkowski went back inside the centre twice more, again while rubbing an object in the front of his pants.
He then went next door to the Australia Post shop, and again touched his genital area, this time while children were in the area.
Police had received several reports of his weird activity and they came and arrested him.
He denied touching himself, saying he “had a cigarette lighter” in his pocket and was high after consuming ice.
His defence lawyer said he was “significantly under the influence while offending” and “an idiot” for doing what he did.
He said the “object” was “in fact a pair of socks tied to the front of his trousers” and he was not directly touching his penis at any time.
He said the bum-grabbing incident was not planned and “opportunistic”, but he accepted the young woman “shouldn’t have had to go through what she did”.
The court heard before these crimes he had 11 indecent assaults, nine drive while disqualified and five drug or drink-driving priors on his long rap sheet.
Magistrate Gerard Lethbridge said the community needed to be protected from people like Wittkowski.
“You assaulted a woman going about her business working in a shop,” Mr Lethbridge said.
“Then there’s the bizarre offending when you go into a shopping centre three times with some sort of phallic object – for reasons unknown – in your pants.”
Wittkowski was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on July 6.
