SURREY – A South Asian cab driver from Surrey who sexually assaulted a teenage passenger after she revealed she didn’t have any money for the fare has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Wasim Asghar Malik, 49, will also have to serve two years of probation for forcing himself on the 17-year-old girl, following a sentencing decision by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Murray Blok, reported the Surrey Leader.
“All women – all people, for that matter, but women in particular – must be able to feel safe in a taxicab,” Blok wrote in reasons posted online Thursday.
“As a taxi driver, Mr. Malik was in a position of trust in relation to his youthful passenger. She was not only vulnerable because of her youth but also because, as I find, she was still affected by the alcohol she had consumed earlier in the night. She was entitled to expect that she would be transported safely to her destination without the driver taking advantage of her vulnerability.”
Malik, a married father of three, picked up the victim and her young friend in the early morning hours of April 18, 2009, according to court documents. The girls had been downing shots and drinking beer at two house parties, and they asked Malik to drive them to another in Fort Langley, where a friend was supposed to be waiting with cab fare.
But when they arrived in the suburban city, the intoxicated teens couldn’t locate either the party or their friend, and begged Malik to take them home to Surrey. He dropped the victim’s friend off in Cloverdale, and then took the other girl to his Fraser Heights home with the taxi meter reading more than $80.
Malik’s wife and children were out of town for the night.
The victim asked to use the bathroom and when she returned she found Malik stripping naked. He tried to kiss her, pull off her clothes and force her into oral sex.
When she clenched her mouth and struggled, she said Malik told her, “Please baby, you owe me for the cab.”
The teen managed to squirm out from Malik’s grasp and ran out the door and down the street. She called a friend and took refuge in a nearby Tim Hortons, where she told the entire story to a security guard.
During his trial, Malik’s lawyers argued that the victim had freely offered the driver sexual favours in payment for the hefty cab fare, but the judge rejected that as an unbelievable theory.
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