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Sint-Niklaas –
The 20-year-old woman who sexually assaulted a 3-year-old child in Waasland Shopping on Monday remains arrested. The Dendermond council chamber decided this on Friday. The woman is also said to have admitted that she has been struggling with pedophilic feelings for some time.
The facts took place on Monday evening in Waasland Shopping in Sint-Niklaas. 20-year-old ZB from Temse, a woman of Polish descent, touched a three-year-old child in a clothing store while, according to a witness, she also tried to suffocate him. She had taken the child out of a buggy and hid her among the clothes racks. Witnesses were able to intervene in time. According to sources, the woman had also partially undressed.
A witness managed to keep the woman at the scene while police arrived. “She didn’t say a word the whole time.” The woman was handcuffed and arrested for assault. On Friday she appeared before the Dendermond council chamber, which decided to extend her detention for at least a month. She was charged with rape and indecent assault.
During her interrogation, the young woman allegedly admitted that she had had pedophilic feelings for some time. But she would never have expressed those feelings before. The woman has a clean criminal record and there are therefore no previous incidents.
“My client realizes that what she has done is unacceptable,” says Lennert Dierickx, one of her lawyers. “It is extremely remarkable that these sexual offenses involve a particularly young woman. Such facts usually do not occur in public, but in private within the home environment. The fact that she does this so openly in a store, where she knew people would notice her, indicates that her mental state is not okay.”
Fellow lawyer Ann van der Steen agrees. “The fact that she suddenly takes a baby out of a buggy shows that this is a serious problem,” she says. During the council chamber it was therefore decided to appoint a court psychiatrist to examine the mental state of the woman. According to the lawyer, conditional release is therefore not an option at all. “It is important that she now receives the necessary guidance and undergoes the necessary investigation,” said the lawyer.