A teenager has been found guilty of preying on two women and a 14-year-old schoolgirl in a three-week-long string of sex attacks in Carshalton.
Ramazan Karapinar, 19, of Wrythe Lane, was convicted of two counts of sexual assault at Croydon Crown Court yesterday.
He had already admitted a third attack last week.
In one of the attacks, which all took place between January 9 and January 28, the teenager targeted a 14-year-old girl who had got off a school bus in Carshalton Beeches.
Prosecutor Irshan Sheikh told the court Karapinar grabbed the girl around the waistband of her jeans before beginning to pull them down.
He said: "He began to ask her to come to his home and he then grabbed her round the waistband of her jeans from behind before running away.
“He then ran back and put two fingers down the rear of her jeans and was pulling them down.
“She shouted at him and raced down the road to a neighbour’s house.”
Karapinar also groped a woman in her 20s, grabbing her between the legs to pick her up and repeatedly saying the word ‘sex’ after she got off a train at Carshalton station on January 9.
The Turkish national was found not guilty of three other sexual assualts.
He was cleared of groping a teacher near The Sub pub in North Street on January 7.
Hugh French, the teenager’s defence lawyer, said: “The way the separate incidents were committed are not so strikingly unique to be able to say that it must have been him.
“They are not so similar… whereas sometimes particular fetishes are present in connecting incidents. That’s not here.
“There is a gap between suspicion and being sure, and an absence of evidence to fill that gap.”
Karapinar was arrested at Carshalton station following the attacks near The Grove park in January.
Following the attacks police urged vigilance and warned people to avoid dimly lit areas after several women reported being targeted.
Karapinar will be sentenced at Croydon Crown Court on November 4.
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