A STUDENT who touched a woman’s bottom in a nightclub as a “joke” has been convicted of sexual assault.

Mohamed Makhluf, 24, of Arundel Road, Brighton, was also convicted of assaulting the girl after she confronted him.

Makhluf admitted he had deliberately touched the woman’s bottom at Lola Lo nightclub in East Street, Brighton, earlier this year but said it was a joke “in an innocent sense”, his trial at Hove Crown Court heard.

Jurors took less than two hours to convict him of one count of sexual assault and one count of assault, after a trial starting on Wednesday, September 24.

They cleared him of another charge of sexual assault, in which he was accused of putting his hand down the trousers of the same victim, whose identity is protected by law.

Summing-up at the last day of his trial on Friday September 26, Judge Shani Barnes said the woman was standing at the top of a flight of stairs in the club when she felt someone touch her bottom.

At first she did not react but “shortly after there was another, more definite touching and this time she thought, hang on, this is not acceptable”.

When she confronted Makhluf he put “his hand across her throat and aggressively throws her backwards,” the court heard.

Makhluf had said the touching was “just a joke and in the cold light of the court, it was not easy to explain why that was funny,” jurors heard.

Makhluf is due to be sentenced on October 31.