Facts
The case concerns a superior, X., who was accused of sexually harassing his minor apprentice, born in 1991, on three occasions between October 24 and December 12, 2007. The incidents took place in a Brockenhaus where X. was the person in charge and the apprentice was doing an internship. The first two incidents consisted of touching the apprentice's thigh over his clothes, while the third incident involved X. lifting the apprentice's T-shirt and stroking his bare back with his hand.
X. was fined 400 Swiss francs by the Polizeirichteramt Winterthur, then given the same sentence by the Obergericht des Kantons Zürich. X. filed a criminal appeal with the SCC, requesting the annulment of the judgment and his acquittal of the sexual harassment charges.
Considerations
The SCC examined the constituent elements of the offense of sexual harassment, as defined in Article 198, paragraph 2, of the Swiss Criminal Code (SCC). It considered that the superior who strokes with his hand, under the T-shirt, the bare back of his minor apprentice fulfills, in the specific circumstances of the case, the constituent element of the offense of sexual harassment.
The SCC also examined the gestures on the thigh, in the knee area, over the clothes, and considered that they did not, by themselves, have a sexual connotation. However, it estimated that the fact that X. lifted the apprentice's T-shirt and stroked…