A recently arrived illegal boat migrant who groped and tried to kiss a young girl wearing her school uniform, and whose arrest in July triggered a summer of protests over the presence of migrant hotels in local communities, has been handed a 12 month prison sentence.
Ethiopian national Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, who may be 38 or 41 years old, was sentenced at Chelmsford Magistrates’ court on Tuesday after having been earlier found guilty of two counts of sexual assault. He was also found guilty at that previous hearing of attempted sexual assault, harassment without violence, and attempting to incite a girl to engage in sexual activity.
In addition to the 12 month sentence, Kebatu — who was a teacher in his home country — will also be placed on the sex offenders’ register for a period of ten years. While his lawyer said Kebatu wants to be deported, the UK does not have an extradition treaty with his native Ethiopia, which may complicate matters, it is stated.
The court heard how Kebatu had approached a group of children on July 7th. He targeted one of those children, a 14-year-old girl, and told her that she was “very pretty”, and that age “did not matter”. He invited her to return to his taxpayer-funded hotel room to “make lovely African babies”. He encountered the same girl the following day, July 8th, tried to kiss her, and sexually assaulted her by touching her thigh.
Essex Police noted: “He also made further sexually explicit comments despite being told the girl’s age and the fact that she was wearing her school uniform”.
This interaction with the girl came only shortly after another sex assault the same day, on a separate adult woman who had offered to help him write a résumé so he could find a job. It is not stated whether Kebatu actually intended to seek work, which is legally prohibited for asylum seekers.
Kebatu had touched that woman and tried to kiss her, and after she witnessed him also trying to interact with the schoolgirl, she called the police who quickly arrested the man, “within minutes”. This woman later testified that Kebatu “did not even appear to know that what he’s done was wrong”.
The court also heard how Kebatu had only been a resident of the Bell Hotel, Epping — a migrant accommodation subcontracted to the government to house alleged asylum seekers to the United Kingdom — a week at the time of his arrest. Further, he had only been in the country a matter of days before attempting to incite the young girl to engage in sexual activity.
He had travelled to Britain from Ethiopia through the Sudan, Libya, Italy and France. Finally, he paid a human trafficker €1,800 to be smuggled across the English Channel in a small boat.
The Guardian reports the judge called Kebatu’s attempts to avoid talking about his assaults by claiming poor English skills and supposed mental health issues as “manipulative”. The judge said Kebatu poses a “significant” risk of reoffending and said he evidently holds women in poor regard. The remorse he feels is not for the victims but rather for himself because he got caught, the judge said.
Kebatu’s 12 month sentence for touching the woman and girl and attempting to incite the child was quickly subjected to criticism. Academic Professor David Betz described it as a “.38 Connolly sentence”, a reference to the British mother and self-described “political prisoner” jailed for 31 months last year, expressing that Kebatu got handed 38-per-cent of the prison time for sex assaults that she got for an intemperate Tweet.
The initial news of Kebatu’s arrest in July triggered a grassroots protest movement in Epping, the town where the offences took place, against the presence of a migrant hotel in the town. The ‘Protect Our Kids’ protests spread and dominated national news for weeks over the summer.
Essex Police took the opportunity of today’s sentencing to criticise the protesters. Essex Police Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Hooper said on behalf of the force: “I don’t think the public could expect me to speak on this case without also addressing the wider issues which it has raised in Epping and further afield.
“Many people have wanted to make their voices heard legitimately on these issues. Some, however, have used them as a reason to commit crime and to carry out disorder and that’s not acceptable. No crime can become an excuse for what we’ve seen at times in Epping throughout the summer.”
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