Man guilty of groping co-worker’s breast after boob job joke

A hotel worker has been sentenced after assaulting his colleague by grabbing her breast and damaging her nipple ring, after she made a joke about getting a boob job in Asia.

A HOBART hotel worker has been found guilty of grabbing his colleague’s breast with a “six out of 10” force that yanked her nipple ring and left her breast bleeding.

The attack came after the woman joked about getting a boob job in Thailand, with the worker replying he’d “never touched an Aussie woman’s breast before”, then groped her “forcefully on the breast”.

The woman denied she pulled her shirt apart so he could put his hand inside and that she smiled and made an “audible sound of enjoyment”, a newly published Magistrates Court of Tasmania decision said.

The indecent assault occurred in August 2018 after the worker drove his colleague home, telling the woman she was beautiful and asking to feel her breasts.

During the four-day hearing, the woman told the court she laughed – thinking her colleague was joking – and was reaching for her handbag when the man “jumped on” her.

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She said the pair wrestled as she tried to untangle his arms while sternly repeating the word “no”, but the man put his hand up her shirt before she managed to get away and run inside – phoning her mother and a friend in distress.

Magistrate Michael Daly said the man lied when he was interviewed by police and “expressly denied” touching the woman at all – but later admitted in court that he had touched her breast.

However, the man claimed he had done so with consent and the woman had tickled him throughout after a “flirtatious” friendship developed at work during which she “kissed him on the lips once and touched his butt twice”.

Mr Daly rejected the man’s claims that he lied because the police didn’t have an interpreter for him so he did not “understand 100 per cent”, that he was afraid to “speak out”, and that he was scared.

“I am satisfied that the defendant understood the language used in and the premises of the questions which were asked,” he said.

“I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant knew that (the woman) did not consent to him touching her breast.”