Guilty of sexually assaulting woman while giving her a lift

A Gozitan man who sexually assaulted an English woman will spend time behind bars after a court of appeal overturned his earlier acquittal by a magistrate's court. Paschalino Cefai, had been acquitted on charges of having committed a violent indecent assault upon the woman whom he met at a bar in Marsalforn, Gozo one evening in May 2010. The court of appeal, presided by Mr Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri, heard how the accused had allegedly offered a lift to the victim who had been drinking at the bar and had had a drink too much. On the way to Victoria, in his Mitsubishi Pajero, the accused had allegedly tried to sexually assault his passenger by touching her, slipping his hands under her dress and kissing her on the lips. The woman had done all she could to resist the man's advances and had pleaded that she felt sick so that the accused eventually let her out of his car. Confused and panicked, the victim made her way to the police station in Victoria where she claimed that a man "quite big, about forty" had assaulted her. In his statement to the police, the accused had alleged that the woman had felt sick as he was driving her home, although no visible traces of vomit had been...