A shoe fetishist who moved to London found the fashionable footwear there so exciting that he robbed a series of women of their shoes to satisfy his sexual obsession, a court was told.
Omar Abd-el-Gowd, 26, told police that he had been obsessed with ladies’ shoes since the age of 12, and that he had taken shoes for “sexual purposes” for years.
But when he moved from Stockton-on-Tees to the capital, he was driven to new levels of obsession by the array of trendy shoes he encountered.
Toby Fitzgerald, for the prosecution, told Inner London Crown Court: “He found that fashionable — to him — and sexually attractive shoes were to be found in greater abundance in the capital. He told police this was the trigger for him to go beyond simply taking shoes.”
He began robbing shoes from the feet of women as they walked down the street. For over a year, Abd-el-Gowd targeted well-shod women in London, in most cases getting away with a single shoe, but once making off with a pair.
Mr Fitzgerald told the court that Abd-el-Gowd’s unusual fascination had caused him no end of problems in his love life.
“He said, although he was sexually attracted to women and had had a sexual relationship with a girlfriend as recently as November 2005, his past relationships with women had been somewhat complicated by the fact that he would find a particular girlfriend’s shoes more sexually attractive than the girl herself,” Mr Fitzgerald told the court.
Abd-el-Gowd, of Honor Oak Park, southeast London, denies one count of sexual assault on November 9 last year.
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