A CARE assistant accused of a string of early morning sexual offences against five different women has claimed he only approached them because he was new to the Island, was lost and in need of directions as he took the stand during his Royal Court trial.
Abdelkarim Arfaoui (27) described himself as a “very happy” recently-married man who had moved to Jersey six months before the allegations and did not know St Helier well yet. According to his own account, he was drunk and approaching the women to ask for help.
He denies ten charges including attempted rape and five counts of sexual touching without consent.
The women accuse Mr Arfaoui of being sexually aggressive and attacking them within a 90-minute period during the early hours of the morning. None of them know each other, and several of them were on their way to work and to the gym when the alleged offences took place.
Mr Arfaoui gave evidence yesterday morning describing how he had been on a night out after he received his first salary, having been unemployed for several months.
When asked by Advocate Greg Herold-Howes, how well he knew Jersey at the time of the alleged offending, Mr Arfaoui said: “Not very well,” adding that he used Google Maps to navigate, but did not have an internet connection that night as he had not topped up his phone.
He described himself as “very drunk” – estimating himself as between nine and 9.5 out of ten on a scale of drunkeness.
The first woman told the court last week that Mr Arfaoui walked alongside her in the early hours of that morning, but that he became aggressive, forcibly kissed her, strangled her, tripped or tackled her to the floor, and attempted to rape her. She also said he touched her intimately.
Mr Arfaoui said none of this was true and that instead he had walked with the woman but she became angry when he refused to have sex with her because he needed to go home to his wife.
“She looked angry, she was disappointed,” he said. “I tried to calm her down. I don’t want her to be upset.”
Describing CCTV footage shown to the jury earlier in the trial, which the prosecution argued showed him pinning the woman against a fence, Mr Arfaoui said: “I was convincing her to understand that I have to go.”
He said he was “trying to be cheeky, trying to be funny, to make her laugh”.
“Yes, I put my mouth [on her] and made a silly noise,” he said, comparing it to tickling.
After the woman told him to leave, Mr Arfaoui said he followed her to ask for directions to his flat, adding: “At that moment, I was panicking, I was drunk in the street and I don’t even know how to go home. I’m lost.”
He said the woman told him to “go to hell” and “don’t come close” and was punching him, “not letting [him] any chance to even breathe”.
“I was going to ask her for directions. Now I’m confused. I don’t know why all this reaction happened… It’s [an] over-reaction, what she did,” he continued.
Mr Arfaoui denied tackling the woman, stating that she fell and then tried to kick him. He denied putting his leg over her, pulling down her top, groping her, pulling her dress and underwear to the side and exposing his penis.
He said: “I didn’t punch her or slap her. I didn’t do any harm to her. [It was] just to stop her from punching me.”
Mr Arfaoui said he approached the second woman for directions, but was too tired to remember how to speak English so addressed her with a mix of English and his native Arabic. He said he tried to apologise to her when she became scared.
“I want to go home, I’m so tired. I’m tired and drunk and it’s too much,” he said.
He approached the third woman when he was “really stuck” and put his hand on her shoulder, but that she was “scared, shocked, surprised”.
Where the woman alleged he had kissed her face, he said he lost control of his legs and fell with his head on her face. He denied pinning her against a car and telling her “I love you”.
Mr Arfaoui said he became “more and more upset, more drunk” as the morning went on, and that he approached a fourth woman and spoke to her in the hopes of her giving him directions. He denied groping her.
He also denied groping another woman, stating he had asked for directions and leant towards her as he thought she would show him a map on her phone. When the woman shouted at him, he ran away.
The defendant described becoming more and more desperate as none of the women he approached helped him get home, and denied “targeting” the women, saying: “I hope that you understand that I was really, really lost.”
Commissioner Alan Binnington is presiding. The trial continues.
