Tuesday, June 24, 2025 - A Qatari man has been jailed for seven years in the UK after s3xually assaulting a woman in a hospital toilet, attempting to justify his actions by citing limited interaction with women in his home country.
Nasser Al-Gherainiq, a 27-year-old camel herder, attacked
the victim at the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, South West London, after
travelling to the UK for treatment for a rare heart condition. He dragged the
woman into a toilet cubicle and assaulted her.
He admitted to s3xual assault and causing a person to engage
in sexual activity without consent, and was convicted of two counts of
attempted rape. He will be deported upon completing his prison sentence.
During the sentencing at Southwark Crown Court, his defence
barrister, Jane Bickerstaff KC, argued that Al-Gherainiq’s background offered
him little exposure to women, noting that he had never left Qatar before July
2023 and had minimal social interaction with females outside his family.
“The only woman he would have had any meaningful contact
with is his mother,” she told the court, adding that his life in the Qatari
desert had “curtailed his exposure to urban and modern societal norms.”
She claimed that the defendant was emotionally and socially
immature, describing him as having the awareness of an adolescent and stating
he “completely failed to understand” the victim’s resistance.
The court heard that the assault took place in August 2023,
when Al-Gherainiq told the woman he needed to use the toilet and then pulled
her inside the cubicle. The victim said she was “frozen with fear” during the
ordeal.
In a written impact statement read in court, she described
how the incident left her deeply traumatised, stating: “My life has never been
the same. My family still do not know what happened to me… I am withdrawn and
highly anxious and overly cautious, especially when I’m on my own in an
unfamiliar environment.
Rejecting the defence’s plea for leniency, Judge Adam Hiddleston told Al-Gherainiq, who required an Arabic interpreter, that cultural differences did not excuse his actions.
“I appreciate the cultural differences between the world in which you grew up and in the United Kingdom,” the judge said. “You knew perfectly well what you were doing was against her wishes.”
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