@nautican:
A mother has blasted the sentence given to a sex offender who attacked her 10-year-old daughter in a supermarket toilet.
The woman – who cannot be named to protect the identity of her child – voiced fury that Katie Dolatowski had been freed to serve her sentence in the community.
Dolatowski, 18, sexually assaulted the girl in the toilets of Morrisons, Kirkcaldy.
She grabbed the terrified youngster by the face, shoved her into the cubicle and ordered her to remove her trousers.
But instead of being jailed at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court, Dolatowski, who identifies as a woman but was believed by her victim’s family to be a man, was given community payback and tagging orders.
The mum felt “very, very let down” and said: “I don’t have any confidence whatsoever that he will not go out and do something equally as bad or worse.”
The girl had been sledging when the assault occurred on March 4, last year, a month after Dolatowski had filmed a 12-year-old girl on the toilet in another supermarket in Dunfermline.
When she came out of her cubicle, Dolatowski shoved her back in and told her there was a man outside who would kill her mother.
The brave schoolgirl, however, punched Dolatowski in the face, stomach and groin and ran to her father and siblings waiting just outside the toilets.
Her mother said the girl was hysterical after the attack and continued to suffer flashbacks.
She said: “This is something that will remain with her for the rest of her life.
“He was stalking the toilets. He went there specifically to attack a child.
“We were so, so lucky that nothing worse happened. It was only her reaction that stopped that. It could have been a five-year-old child that wouldn’t have been able to fight back.”
The court heard Dolatowski had been in the social care system since the age of three and had mental health issues.
But the mother said: “A lot of people have been in care but they do not go out and assault children.
“I don’t care that he has issues or what his background is, he is a paedophile and he has been let out on a supervision order.”
Dolatowski admitted sexually assaulting the girl and following another girl into the toilets at Asda Halbeath, Dunfermline, on February 8, and trying to film her urinating by holding her mobile phone over the cubicle partition.
Banning her from having contact with children, Sheriff James Williamson gave her what he described as a “stringent” community-based sentence, allowing her to be released from Polmont Young Offenders Institution to supported accommodation.
Dolatowski was considered to pose a “moderate risk” of reoffending but Sheriff Williamson said: “I have come to the conclusion that the public will be better protected by the imposition of a stringent community payback order.”