A 63-year-old sex offender who engaged in “predatory, intimidating behaviour” towards a vulnerable young person has been jailed for five years.
Ronaldo Otto, who goes by the first name Samantha, of Grosvenor Square, Rathmines, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexually assaulting a 20-year-old autistic man on February 1st, 2023.
Sgt Lesley Roche told the court the injured party had been diagnosed with autism and ADHD when he was a child.
She told Simon Matthews, prosecuting, that Otto, who is originally from the Philippines, is transitioning to female and goes by the first name Samantha.
READ MORE
The court heard that after boarding a bus, the injured party was was followed upstairs by Otto, who sat beside him. Roche gave evidence the complainant uses a disability card for the bus that Otto would have seen.
Otto asked for the complainant’s phone number and dialled it to make sure it rang.
The court was told Otto began groping the complainant on his leg and crotch area. Otto followed the victim got off the bus, the court heard.
Otto put the victim’s arm behind his back and brought him down a laneway and undid the drawstring on the victim’s trousers before performing oral sex on him.
Otto then put €20 in the victim’s pocket and said: “I’ll text you again tomorrow and we’ll do it again” and later sent a message saying: “Thank you”. Roche gave evidence the victim said he felt he could not leave because Otto threatened him.
The complainant told his parents what had happened and he went to the sexual assault treatment unit. He gave specialist Garda interviewers a description and CCTV garnered from Dublin Bus allowed gardaí to identify Otto.
The victim’s trousers were sent for DNA analysis and a positive match for Otto was made.
In a victim-impact statement read to the court by Matthews, the injured party said he has felt depressed ever since the incident.
“Since that day my life has changed ... I was happy all the time before that happened,” he said.
Roche agreed with Pieter Le Vert, defending, that his client had previously been subjected to a robbery and a serious assault and at that time “identified as female”.
In mitigation, Le Vert said his client was a victim of two serious crimes. A document from Ruhama, an NGO providing support to sex workers, was handed into the court.
Le Vert said Otto was biologically male but had augmented breasts and was taking hormones.
Le Vert said his client had operated a hair salon in the Philippines and was invited to join a friend’s salon in Ireland in 2011.
Counsel said difficulties with Otto’s vocal cords had caused his client to have no voice. Having stopped working as a result of that and suffering “severe financial difficulties”, Otto began “working on the streets”, the court previously heard.
In October 2020, Otto was given a three-year fully suspended sentence after pleading guilty to throwing a cup of boiling water on a man in a casino in 2019.
Six months of that term was reactivated last July because Otto breached the terms of the sentence after being convicted by a jury of sexually assaulting an 18-year-old in a laneway in October 2022.
In sentencing on Wednesday, Judge Orla Crowe jailed Otto for five years commencing on the lawful expiration of the sentences for sexual assault and assault causing harm.
The judge noted there had been no expression of remorse besides a guilty plea, for the “predatory, intimidating behaviour”.
