An Australian police officer was recently found guilty of sexually harassing a 13-year-old girl who was reportedly “squeezed” in an elevator in July 2019. The excuses of Glenn Roche, who tried to present the incident as did not convince the judge and so the 54-year-old will wait to hear the sentence that will be imposed on him in August.
According to the Daily Mail, on this day in 2019, Roche had spent the previous hours walking in various Sydney attractions with his own wife and the girl’s family, which includes her mother and sisters. The scene in question in the video above was recorded at the end of this joint outing, when it was time to say goodbye.
In the scenes recorded by the security camera and published by 7News, the 54-year-old appears to “chase” the girl in the elevator of the Sydney’s Cambraata train station, and to grab her tightly by the waist before her body slides on the ground. The little girl later testified in court that her husband squeezed her breast twice as he tried to “grab” her, ostensibly for play.
The 54-year-old used this very excuse, that it was a game, when he appeared in court in Liverpool, New South Wales, this week. In previous conversations with police, Roche had admitted that his hands were found on the girl’s chest, but stressed that this was accidental and not intended for sexual gratification
. “It happened because she let her body fall to the ground and slipped through my arms,” she said.
The first time he appeared in court last September, the 54-year-old (who has been made available from his job) explained that before “chasing the joke” the little girl had hugged and kissed her younger sister and her mother on the cheek . “At that moment my mind saw it as a challenge to fight her and give her a kiss, as I had done to her sisters and mom. I remember kissing her on the right cheek and that was my only goal “.
Later that night, the girl’s mother called Roche to tell him that she had scared her daughter. The little girl told the court that she still has nightmares from the attack and that she is afraid that something like this might happen to her again. Roche still insists that he did nothing wrong and that his intentions were “clear”.
