A 66-year-old senior civil servant working in the education sector pleaded guilty to molesting two female colleagues.
He had hugged her twice because of her good work performance, but he claimed that she reached out and hugged him first and if he didn’t respond, it would be “impolite”.
The identities of the parties cannot be named due to a court order to protect the identities of the victims.
The accused faced 9 charges of indecent assault, where he assaulted a 43-year-old woman 5 times between March and August 2016, and another 55-year-old woman 4 times between February and December 2016.
The court heard that the 43-year-old victim joined the company in 2006 and transferred to his department in the middle of 2015.
The accused said that the two had a good relationship at the time, and that he had embraced her because of her good work performance.
He said that “we just gently embraced, our chests didn’t touch each other and it lasted one to two seconds”.
As for the 55-year-old victim, the accused said that he had known her since 2007 and admitted to hugging her twice, the first of which was during the funeral of his late mother.
The second time was when he renewed his contract in July 2016 and she hugged him happily, which he said he only did so because he was in a “dilemma”.