Family driver jailed by Dubai court for touching nine-year-old boy

DUBAI // A Pakistani driver has been sentenced to six months in prison for sexually assaulting a nine-year-old boy.

AK, 47, denied a charge of sexual assault at Dubai Criminal Court last April and claimed he was only massaging the child's leg.

He was arrested after the boy told his mother he was being touched inappropriately.

The Greek boy told his mother that he thought the family's driver was homosexual after an incident when he was being taken for a swimming lesson.

He told her that, after a swimming lesson on February 27, he was in the car waiting for his brother to arrived when the driver put him in the back seat and started to touch him.

"He told me to relax," recalled the boy, who said similar incidents took place over the next two days.

"I asked him to stop but I was scared he would do something even worse," said the boy.

The boy's mother told the court that when her son told her of his suspicions she initially thought he was talking about one of his friend's who shares the driver's name.

"I told him he must be joking with you but, when he insisted on what he said, I tried to make him talk and then he told me that he would tell me a secret," she said.

The woman informed her husband, who spoke to the driver. "I had to hold myself back when he confessed to me and started apologising," said the boy's father, 41. "I told him not to come back to work and the next morning I reported him to police."

The driver will be deported after completion of his jail term.