Edmond Tcherna pleads guilty to ‘act of gross indecency’ against woman in Darwin CBD

A man has pleaded guilty to committing ‘an act of gross indecency’ against a woman in the Darwin CBD by approaching her from behind and ‘forcefully’ grabbing her as she walked home.

Edmond Tcherna, 41, of Wadeye, pleaded guilty in the NT Supreme Court yesterday to committing an act of gross indecency. Picture: Katrina Bridgeford

A MAN has pleaded guilty to committing “an act of gross indecency” against a woman in the Darwin CBD by approaching her from behind and “forcefully” grabbing her genital area as she walked home from the gym.

Edmond Tcherna, 41, of Wadeye, entered the plea at an appearance in the Supreme Court on Tuesday in relation to the incident that occurred early this year.

The court heard Tcherna, who has a cognitive impairment, had been on a suspended sentence for arson when he visited the CBD to meet family members on January 3, accompanied by two support workers, and had “run off” after getting into an argument with one of them.

It heard the support workers had caught up to Tcherna and the whole group had been walking back to their car, with the defendant trailing the others by several metres, when they encountered the victim – a woman in her 20s – as she walked home from the gym.

“As the victim walked past the Elders Real Estate building on Smith St, the offender approached the victim and walked closely behind her for a short time,” prosecutor Sally Ozolins told the court.

“He then reached out his hand, putting it between the victim’s legs and forcefully applied pressure with his fingers to her vagina over her gym pants, causing her pain.”

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The court heard that the victim had screamed and pushed and kicked Tcherna away.

He immediately walked away from her but was stopped from leaving the scene by a member of the public.

He was arrested by police a short time later and taken to the Palmerston watch house, and has been in custody since.

Tcherna’s lawyer, James Burke, told the court his client had a significant cognitive impairment and had been upset about the death of a loved one, whose funeral he had been barred from attending, at the time.

He also said his client had spent more than four of the past five years in prison for a number of different offences, which put his client at risk of being institutionalised.

”On my calculations, over the last five-and-a-half years, he’s spent four years and two months in prison, which is a significant amount of time,” he said.

“Certainly Mr Tcherna is not a young man, but at 41 years of age, that period is significant in his life.”

Judge Jenny Blokland adjourned the case to order pre-sentence and institutional reports to inform sentencing.

The case is due to return for further submissions on September 10.