Ex-Disney Talent Gets 20 Months for Assault on Maid

By Vir B. Lumicao

A 53-year-old Filipino musician will have to spend the next 20 months in jail for indecently assaulting a neighbor’s Indonesian helper in Tung Chung in May this year, a District Court judge ruled on Oct 11.

A two-day trial scheduled for defendant Edwin Esguerra, a former trumpeter at Hong Kong Disneyland, lasted only half a day as he pleaded guilty to the charge before Judge W.K. Kwok.
“On your own guilty plea and admission, you are convicted of the charge,” Kwok said. Esguerra’s guilty plea ended a case that began on May 3, 2016 when he entered his neighbor’s ground-floor flat in Tung Chung Village after a drinking party with friends and tried to force himself on the 33-year-old maid.

The defendant, his 21-year-old son and 23-year-old daughter lived in a first-floor flat just above the unit of the maid’s employers.

A prosecution report said the maid was alone when Esguerra, holding a broken door handle, barged in and asked if her employer could fix the door handle. Then he asked whether there was anyone else in the house and she replied none.

The defendant suddenly grabbed the victim, dragged her to the employers’ bedroom and pushed her to the bed. The maid shouted and struggled but Esguerra, after stripping naked, managed to pin her down her down and pull off her clothes and underwear.

Esguerra kissed the victim’s breast and bit her left nipple, then inserted his finger in her genitals, the report said. He only stopped when he realized the victim was having her monthly period.

The defendant lingered for some time in the house and tried to assault the victim again in the kitchen, but she managed to run outside and called her agency as well as her husband in Indonesia. When police arrived, they found Esguerra fast asleep in his own flat.

A medical report showed the victim suffered a contusion on her upper sternum caused by suction, a tiny laceration along the base of her left nipple, two reddish bruises on her left abdomen, and bruises on her private parts.

The defense counsel said the defendant, who came to Hong Kong in 2005 to work as trumpeter at Disneyland, was a friendly man who had a clear record here and in the Philippines but was overcome by alcohol.

“He was too drunk that when police arrived he was fast asleep in his flat and could not recall that such an incident happened,” the lawyer said as he pleaded for Judge Kwok’s leniency for his client.
The judge replied that the only mitigation was the defendant being “very drunk” and he  even doubted it, saying that a heavily drunk man would not go asking about getting a door handle fixed.
He expressed his misgiving about the charge being just indecent assault “when the defendant could have raped the victim if she had no menstruation.”

The judge said that if the case happened in England, the accused would have been charged with sexual assault by penetration and he would be jailed for life.

Kwok called for a two-hour break to review the facts of the case after failing to get both sides to return the next day for the sentence. When the court resumed at 12:30pm, the judge meted out a 20-month jail term, discounted because of Esguerra’s guilty plea.

(Source: SunWebHK.com)