The Court of Appeal sentenced a Hong Kong man to two years in jail on Tuesday for sexually assaulting a female customer in his darts club in 2014, raising his previous sentence of community service.
Defendant Thomas Lee, 35, was sentenced to 240 hours of community service last year after he pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault. He was previously charged with – and denied – one count of rape, but the prosecution changed it to a lesser charge after police failed to collect sufficient evidence to prove he had drugged the victim.
On Tuesday, three judges overturned Lee’s previous sentence at the Court of Appeal and ordered him to serve a two-year prison sentence immediately. Further details will be announced at a later date.
On March 18, 2014, a 22-year-old woman visited Four Kings Darts Club, owned by Lee, in San Po Kong. She drank two alcoholic beverages that Lee gave her, and felt dizzy shortly afterwards, the court heard. She recalled laying on a sofa as someone touched her waist and breasts from behind, whispering “Wake up! I can’t stand it anymore”, HK01 reports.
The prosecution said she told the person to stop touching her before losing consciousness. The victim’s boyfriend, who arrived at the scene later, told police that he found her unconscious with her trousers unzipped.
After the victim was taken to the hospital, doctors found sedatives in her bloodstream and semen in her underwear and outside her genitals. The semen was confirmed to be Lee’s. However, a medical exam of the victim’s genitals found no signs of trauma.
During Lee’s trial at the High Court last year, Judge Gareth Lugar-Mawson said Lee may have believed he could begin a romantic relationship with the victim, as they had texted each other regularly before the assault.
Lugar-Mawson said the prosecution had not brought forward evidence proving that Lee had drugged the victim, and handed down a lenient sentence because he believed Lee would not be able to find employment if he was imprisoned, Apple Daily reports.
“You also appear to have an entrepreneurial spirit which can be seen by the fact you set up this darts club where your offence took place,” the judge said. “You, unlike most men, and indeed women, who appear before me in these courts, are a man of good character… You are an individual of some worth.”
Lugar-Mawson, who said during the trial last year that he did not believe the victim’s sexual assault would affect her in the long term, later apologized after a psychologist said she had post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
