A Wollongong Hospital wardsman has been handed a good behaviour bond after accosting a teenage girl outside her home and trying to hug and kiss her as she yelled out for help.
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Aneshan Govender, from Blackbutt, pleaded guilty in Wollongong Local Court on Wednesday to one count each of unlawfully entering enclosed lands and sexually touching a woman without consent.
A set of agreed facts tendered to the court reveal the 18-year-old victim had just returned home from work on the evening of August 11 last year when she noticed a vehicle pull up outside a house opposite where she lived.
She said the car then drove past her and entered a cul-de-sac before conducting a U-turn and stopping outside a house a few doors down.
As the woman walked to her front door, she heard a car door open, then the sound of the latch on her front garden gate move.
She said she tried to open the front door but Govender reached her before she could and grabbed her around the waist with both hands, firmly holding her and preventing her from getting away.
He then moved his head towards hers in what she believed was an effort on his behalf to kiss her.
She screamed out for her mother, who replied "what" from inside the house and Govender fled back towards the still idling car.
He got in the passenger seat and the car sped off.
The woman contact police who arrived a short time later and took her statement.
Officers went to Govender's College Avenue home the following day but he wasn't home. His wife told police her husband had told her he'd spent the previous night "up the mountain".
Govender subsequently attended Lake Illawarra Police Station an hour later and was arrested and charged.
He offered a bizarre explanation for his behaviour when questioned.
"I want to be honest - it was all a misunderstanding, it was mistaken identity," he said.
"I thought she was an assistant in nursing I knew from the hospital. I just went and grabbed her to say hi and when she turned around I realised it wasn't her.
"I was out at Shellharbour Club and let to do some Uber driving but I didn't because I smoked some weed....I know I shouldn't have."
In court on Wednesday, defence barrister Leah Rowan said Govender was mid-way through a months-long, live-in drug treatment program at Odyssey House in Campbelltown.
She said Govender's apology letter to the court demonstrated he had an "extraordinary level of insight and depth of commitment to remaining drug free" and had recognised the harm he'd done to the victim.
"It's not insignificant he's recognised how he would feel if someone did exactly what he did to his daughter or wife," Ms Rowan said.
Magistrate Jillian Kielly accepted that Govender had hit "rock bottom and was now trying to get himself out of a hole".
"His letter of apology is very eloquent and certainly establishes he has significant remorse," she said.
"It is in the community interest that his rehabilitation continues in the way it has started."
She sentenced Govender to a nine-month community corrections order that includes a condition he continue his rehabilitation at Odyssey House and abstain from drugs or alcohol.
