Serial sex pest jailed for attack on little girl in Katherine alleyway

A serial sex pest who touched the bottom of a woman in Woolworths before later approaching a seven-year-old girl in an alleyway as she rode to school and indecently assaulting her has been jailed for at least two years.

A SERIAL sex pest who touched the bottom of a woman in Woolies before later approaching a seven-year-old girl in a Katherine alleyway as she rode to school and indecently assaulting her has been jailed for at least two years.

Nathan Wandiga, 31, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to indecent assault and indecent dealing with a child after attacking his victims on October 20 last year.

The court heard Wandiga had been following the first victim and staring at her while she shopped at Woolworths in the Oasis Shopping Centre with her son before he snuck up on her and touched her on the backside. She turned around and screamed and Wandiga ran away and was captured on closed circuit television fleeing the area.

Then, about 9am the same day, the seven-year-old girl was riding her bike to school along Frangipanni Ct in Katherine East when she encountered him in an alleyway.

In sentencing, Justice Peter Barr said Wandiga waved to her and she asked him if there were “any cheeky dogs down there” before he walked up to her and indecently assaulted her. “The little girl panicked and ran away, leaving her bicycle and school bag in the alleyway,” he said.

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When the girl got home, she told her mother what had happened and the pair started driving around Katherine looking for Wandiga and spotted him on Callistemon Drive before he was arrested later that day.

In setting a head sentence of two years and eight months in prison, Justice Barr noted Wandiga had a long history of indecently dealing with multiple children over the past decade as well as indecent assault and noncompliance with court orders.

“(Your offending) involved your taking advantage of a chance encounter with a little girl, who was also a stranger to you, who was riding her bike to school,” he said.

“You indecently touched her in the area of her vagina, which caused, obviously, great distress to her, such that she abandoned her school bag and bicycle and ran away.”

In setting a non-parole period of two years, Justice Barr urged Wandiga to put his name down for the prison’s sexual offender treatment program “as soon as possible so that you can be given some priority”.

“I do not want to see you coming out of this particular series of offences without getting some proper treatment for your obvious propensity to commit sexual offences,” he said.

“One might regard them as mid-range or even low-range offences but they are of real concern because of their repetitive nature and the distress that they cause to the victims.”

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