A man has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a teenager in an Inverness alleyway.
Adriano Leo Mouzinho, 39, seized the woman by the wrists and thrust his body against hers while making moaning noises.
He then tried to put his hands down her trousers but she managed to fend him off and get away.
Mouzhino denied a single charge of sexual assault at Inverness Sheriff Court, saying he simply held the woman’s hands.
He denied rubbing his body against her, or trying to touch her over or under her clothes.
Teenager attacked in alley
The trial heard from the now 19-year-old woman who described how the incident, on the evening of September 26 last year, unfolded in an alley along Millburn Road.
She said: “He appeared and he grabbed my wrist, he spun himself around and started rubbing his body onto me.”
But the court heard the attack did not stop there.
“He tried to go even further by touching my area,” the woman said.
“He tried to put his hand down my jeans, I shrugged my hardest to try and get him off me.
“When he was touching me he was making noises and things like that, like sex noises. He was just moaning.”
The woman resisted his attempts and managed to escape his grasp.
“I managed to get him off me and got myself away from it,” she said.
Sex assault left woman ‘shocked’ and ‘scared’
The woman said the attack left her in tears feeling “shocked” and “scared”.
She said afterwards Mouzinho told her “sorry, sorry, sorry”.
“He knew that he did wrong,” she added
A second witness, who was with the victim immediately following the assault, told of how the woman’s demeanour changed in the moments after the attack.
“She was acting differently,” she said. “I asked if she was ok and she started crying.”
She went on to say that she challenged Mouzinho, asking what he had done.
“He just started apologising over and over again,” she said.
Taking to the witness box in his own defence Mouzinho, of Braid Square, Glasgow, told the court: “I grabbed her and held her hands, that is all.”
But Sheriff David Harvie rejected Mouzinho’s version of events, finding him guilty of sexual assault.
Sheriff Harvie called for a criminal justice social work report and deferred sentencing to next month, releasing Mouzinho on bail in the meantime but placing him on the sex offenders’ register with immediate effect.