A 65-year-old man from Assen has been sentenced to 150 hours of community service for assaulting five female colleagues on the work floor of a lighter factory in Assen. In addition, the public prosecutor believes that the man should be given a suspended prison sentence of two months.
The man from Assen was able to do his thing from January 2017 to July 2022. At unexpected times he touched women’s intimate parts, such as breasts and buttocks. When incidents occurred, a conversation was held with the work-training company and the suspect’s manager. The sixty-year-old then received a warning and after that there was temporary calm on the work floor.
In July 2021, the man squeezed a woman’s breasts so hard that she ended up at the doctor with bruises. A female manager had had enough. She went to the suspect’s manager. The manager wanted to watch it for a while. The manager then threatened to take it higher. As a result, the suspect was fired.
The suspect has little memory of the incidents, he said. During his last brutal assault, he blacked out due to diabetes, he told the judge. The public prosecutor heard the man say several times that he knew where the boundaries were. The lewd acts were sexually oriented, the prosecutor said. He surprised the women with those touches.
The women all had an intellectual disability and were unable to cope with that behavior. The suspect also suffers from an intellectual disability and a personality disorder. The prosecutor believes that this should be taken into account. The man from Assen has already been convicted of a sexual offense in the distant past.
The court will make its ruling in two weeks.