A sinister sex attacker stared at a woman across a Fife dancefloor for “five minutes” before assaulting her.
Catalin Fekete, 33, left his victim “frozen” when he “locked” her with his arms from behind, squeezed her bottom, and pushed his erect penis against her, at The Brasshouse in Dunfermline.
One of the woman’s friends witnessed the attack and another asked a bouncer to throw out Fekete.
He had denied the offending during a trial, insisting he had never seen any of the women before.
He claimed he had been stared at and “followed” by three other women in the club that night.
Under questioning by prosecutor Azrah Yousaf, he acknowledged having at least 11 beers by the time he got to The Brasshouse and said he had another “four or five” there, then claimed he had dropped “three or four” of them on the floor.
At Dunfermline Sheriff Court, Sheriff Clair McLachlan found Fekete guilty of the October 8 2023 sexual assault and put him on the sex offenders register ahead of sentencing next month.
Club attack
Fekete’s victim, aged in her 50s, told the trial: “He was standing across at the other side of the dancefloor, consistently staring at me, and I was getting a bit frightened by it.”
Asked by Ms Yousaf how long he stared, the woman said: “Five minutes. I felt intimidated, nervous.”
She went on: “He approached me when on the dance floor, tried to dance with me.
“I said ‘no’ and I went over to (a friend).”
She said she told Fekete she was going to get her mother to try to scare him off.
She came off the dance floor and was standing having a drink at a table when Fekete came up and “grabbed me and grabbed his hands round me”.
She said: “He grabbed my bottom, pushed himself into me, tried to put his fingers somewhere from behind.
“I could feel that he was excited.”
She said: “I was placed into a lock. I could not move.
“I was asking him to get off me and that’s why (witnesses) came over to rescue me to get him off me, and he pretty much scampered away.”
The woman said she “froze” during the the five-to-ten-second attack.
She said his “face was totally sweating”.
Facebook appeals
The woman told the trial that the next morning she saw “the same man plastered over Facebook about what he had been up to that night” at the Carnegie Drive club, leading her to report it to police.
One of the woman’s friends told the trial how she intervened when she saw Fekete with his arms around the woman and grabbing her bottom.
The witness said: “She looked distressed, she wanted away from him.”
Fekete, whose address on court papers was given as Izatt Avenue, Dunfermline, told the trial he now lives in Cupar.
He was aided in court by a Romanian interpreter.
Sheriff McLachlan told him she found each of the Crown witnesses to be “wholly credible and reliable” and accepted what they said was truthful.
Sentencing was deferred until February 26 to obtain background reports and Fekete’s bail was continued.
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