Man took photos of woman in toilet at Dublin Airport and then attacked her

Arthur Fiks (47), of no fixed abode, admitted assault causing harm and possession of child pornography at Terminal One on June 28, 2022.

The court heard that the woman had gone into a cubicle of the ladies toilets when she noticed a camera phone pointing under the door and grabbed it.

When the woman opened the cubicle door, Fiks lunged at her to get his phone back and pulled a tuft of hair from her scalp, the court heard.

Fiks told gardaí he was having a nap in the ladies’ toilet at the airport when the woman in the next cubicle grabbed his phone out of his hand and woke him up.

Gardaí described Fiks’ account as “conflicting and self-serving” and said it was not borne out by evidence from the victim and eyewitnesses.

In a ruling today, Judge Pauline Codd sentenced Fiks to three and a half years in prison, with the final nine months suspended.

The sentence was backdated to June 29, 2022, when Fiks went into custody.

Judge Codd ordered that Fiks go on the Sex Offenders’ register and leave the jurisdiction immediately on his release from prison.

She described Fiks’ offending as “truly shocking and disturbing” and said it was greatly aggravated by the invasion of the woman’s privacy, Fiks’ entry into the female bathrooms and his attempt to put the phone under the door.

Judge Codd noted from the victim impact statement, which was not read aloud in court, that the woman required counselling for psychological trauma in the aftermath of the assault.

The woman had to plan her toilet breaks for six months and described herself as “always anxious” and checking every public bathroom. She works with children and describes herself as hyper-vigilant of children and paranoid and sceptical of others after this incident, Judge Codd said.

Judge Codd said that while cases of possession of child pornography often involve more images, “even one such image is one too many,” noting that children need to be protected from sexual exploitation and that this was not a victimless crime.

Detective Garda Neil Cotter told Joe Mulrean BL, prosecuting, that the assault took place in a public area of the airport after the woman had retrieved her bag from the luggage carousel and gone through Customs.

She told gardaí that on seeing a camera phone pointing at her under the toilet door, her immediate reaction was to grab it.

She then heard a voice saying “Ma’am, can I have my phone back?” to which she said she would give the phone to the police.

The woman then opened the door to find the man standing blocking her way before he lunged at her to try to retrieve his black Samsung phone.

She held out her arms to keep the phone away from him and started screaming for help, whereupon Fiks became very aggressive and violent and pulled hair from her scalp.

Airport police described her as visibly upset and still holding her own hair in her hand when they arrived at the scene.

The court heard that other women in the bathroom came to help, including a Ryanair worker who began recording the incident on her phone.

A witness who had just arrived from France described hearing the victim screaming for help and seeing Fiks with his arm around her neck, struggling for something.

Gardaí arrested Fiks and found a bottle of wine and a bottle opener in his bag, along with two other phones, which were analysed and found to contain child pornography.

One Motorola phone contained 120 images of children, of which 42 were described as Category 1, the most serious category, depicting children between the ages of one and 13 involved in sexual activity.

That phone also contained 22 videos of child pornography, of which 18 were listed as Category 1.

A third phone, described as a black LG mobile, contained 195 child pornography images, of which 81 were Category 1, along with 14 videos, of which 11 were Category 1.

All other criminal images were described as being in Category 2, where a child watches or witnesses sexual acts.

Fiks has no previous convictions in Ireland, the court heard.

Fiks told gardaí he had come to Ireland from Poland two months previously and had been working as a mushroom picker on a farm in Co Monaghan.

He was fired over his productivity rate and was trying to arrange to get a temporary passport to go home to Poland, as his Polish ID had gone missing.

Fiks said he had spent three days in Dublin airport and the city centre, sleeping in the airport toilets and sometimes walking all night.

He denied assaulting the woman and said it would have been “a stupid decision” to assault someone in front of all the cameras in the airport.

“I did not come to Ireland to attack anyone; I came to get some work. It would not have happened if she did not take my phone,” Fiks told gardaí.

Mark Lynam SC, defending, described Fiks’ difficult childhood with both parents suffering psychiatric problems. Fiks was in State care from the age of 13 or 14, the court heard.

As an adult, Fiks worked odd jobs as a cleaner and had a history of admissions to psychiatric hospitals.

Mr Lynam described his client as psychologically vulnerable and isolated both in the outside world and in prison.

He said that Fiks suffered very serious sepsis while in custody and was transferred to a hospital where he experienced multiple organ failure and spent several weeks in intensive care, where he was not expected to survive.

Fiks also has epilepsy and a history of deliberate self-harm, the court heard.

He has an extremely poor grasp of English and finds being in prison in Ireland very difficult.

The judge set a headline sentence of four and a half years but reduced this on account of Fiks’ physical and mental health issues.