SOURCE: The Straits Times Online

A tennis player-cum-coach who had one drink too many grabbed the buttocks of two employees of a Clarke Quay nightspot and punched one of them in the face.

Yesterday, Francis Lawrence Del Rosario, 30, a Canadian and Australian national, was jailed for two weeks after he admitted last week to two molestation charges and one of causing hurt.

A third charge of molesting another woman at the restaurant-bar was considered during his sentencing.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Sarah Ong told the court that a 22-year-old server was at the bar counter waiting for drinks to be handed to her at about 1.50am on March 30 when she felt someone grab her buttock.

When she turned around, she saw Del Rosario walking away quickly.

She informed the bartender.

The other victim, a 28-year-old guest relations officer, was outside the premises attending to a drunk female customer when she felt someone grab her buttock.

She turned around and saw Del Rosario retracting his hand.

She confronted him and said: "Who are you to grab my *** and touch me?"

Giving her a sarcastic look, he pointed his finger at her and asked: "Do you think you are pretty?"

He then used his finger to push her on the chest and said loudly that she was "****ing ugly".

As he kept on pushing, she grabbed his shirt and told him not to touch her.

He became aggressive, pulled her hair and punched her face.

Two bouncers came and restrained him.

She was treated in hospital for injuries to the nose and thigh.

Pleading for leniency, his lawyer Gloria James said her client, a struggling professional tennis player-cum-coach, had tendered his sincere apologies to the victims and hoped that they would forgive him.

He had paid $500 to the server and $600 to the other woman.

Counsel said he was remorseful and contrite and could not understand why he had acted the way he did.

Ms James said her client had to approach his friends for financial support after using up all his savings.

The prolonged stay had cost him job contracts back home and his wife had told him that she was going to divorce him.