Man ‘drugged and assaulted’ nine-year-old girl in Harrods’ kidnapping
A court has heard how an American pilot kidnapped a nine-year-old girl outside Harrods before drugging her and repeatedly sexually assaulting her.
Robert Prussak, 57, was captured on CCTV approaching the child after she was separated from her family as they entered the store in central London.
A jury at Isleworth Crown Court heard how the pilot talked to the child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, via a translation app, as she was on holiday from France and did not speak much English.
After telling her that he was going to take her to emergency services so she could find her family, he is accused of taking her to his flat and giving her an “antihistamine with marked sedative effects” before sexually assaulting her in a park.
Opening the trial, Nneka Akudolu KC said: “This defendant took advantage in a situation where a nine-year-old girl had become separated from her family. He tricked her before leading her away from the last place they had seen her and back to his flat.
“Once there, she watched TV and was given a drink which she described as ‘bitter’, she didn’t like it. He offered her another drink which she declined but he told her that she should drink because the apartment was humid.
“[The girl] said that he then took her to a park where she saw joggers. He took her to a corner of the park and slid his hand underneath her hoodie, his hand landing on her chest and belly.”
The jury heard that the girl had told him to stop as she found this “weird.” Prussak then looked down her trousers and kissed her on the cheeks and lips. The girl, who had begun to feel ill, asked Prussak to take her to the emergency services, which he agreed to do.
Staff at the Knightsbridge department store, alongside her family and the police, had been attempting to track down the child since she went missing.
Her family said that as they were entering the department store they were “so mesmerised by the size of the building that they momentarily were not paying attention to the children.”
After checking the store’s security cameras, police obtained an image of a man seen walking away with the child and circulated it to the heads of security at nearby museums and black cab drivers in the area.
The court then heard that the pilot told the girl to knock on a door and to tell those inside that she was lost. Once she did that, he started walking away but the girl returned to him at which point she was spotted by a Metropolitan Police firearms officer guarding the Israeli Embassy.
The American was arrested at the scene, just over three hours after the abduction. A toxicology report found that the child’s urine contained diphenhydramine, an antihistamine medicine that causes drowsiness.
Prussak gave two no-comment interviews to police over the course of two and a half hours after his arrest on April 19. Officers found four empty blister packets of Benadryl in a compartment behind the front door of his flat.
In an hour-long interview with officers four days after the incident, the child said that she felt “a bit strange” and tired after consuming the drink given to her, adding: “I felt like closing my eyes, and I felt like going to sleep.”
Prussak denies one charge of kidnapping, a separate charge of kidnapping with intent to commit a sexual offence, one charge of administering a substance with intent and three charges of sexually assaulting a child under the age of 13. The trial continues.