Muhammad Rizalman at the Wellington District Court last year. Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
A former diplomatic worker has pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a Wellington woman.
Muhammad Rizalman, 39, appeared in the High Court in Wellington this morning, where he pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting Tania Billingsley last year.
Charges of burglary and assault with intent to commit sexual violation were dismissed.
Billingsley took court action last year allowing her to waive her right to name suppression.
The court was told Billingsley was watching a movie on her laptop at a house in the Wellington suburb of Brooklyn in May 2014 when Rizalman entered the house through an unlocked door.
He was naked from the waist down.
She screamed and ran into her bathroom, from where she called the police.
Rizalman's lawyer, Donald Stevens, QC, said the former Malaysian defence attache accepted it was an indecent assault because he was not wearing his trousers or underpants when he went into the house and because he touched Billingsley on the shoulder as she fled the room.
However, it was not a sexual assault, he said.
Rizalman also disputed touching Billingsley's throat; he admitted touching only her shoulder but said his hand could have inadvertently touched her throat as she fled past him.
Dr Stevens said Rizalman was suffering from mental illness at the time of the incident.
But Crown lawyer Grant Burston said the Crown did not accept he was suffering from a mental illness, and nor did it accept the incident was not sexually motivated.
A disputed facts hearing will be held in the Wellington High Court on Friday.
Rizalman was remanded on his existing bail conditions until then.
A version of this story was first published on radionz.co.nz.
Correction: A previous version of this story said Tania Billingsley called her boyfriend when she ran into her bathroom after Muhammad Rizalman entered her house. This is incorrect. She called the police.
