A Ghent café owner who urinated in the face of a drunken customer in his student café has been sentenced to 50 hours of community service for degrading treatment.
The Ghent correctional court heard on Tuesday that a video of the incident, which occurred in the Defoo café, circulated among students late last year. After it appeared in the media, the Mayor of Ghent considered closing the café.
While the café remained open, its owner estimated during the court hearing last week that he had lost approximately €25,000 in revenue due to the incident.
According to the judge, the fact that the victim was able to laugh about the act and the video of it afterwards, “as part of a mutual game of tit-for-tat between himself and the defendant,” does not detract from the fact that it was “disrespectful, insulting, and humiliating.”
The man was prosecuted for degrading treatment. However, his lawyer, Kristiaan Vandenbussche, asked the court for a less severe classification. “In our view, this concerns factual matters in which there was no violation of the victim’s human dignity. My client and the victim are friends, both before the incident and now. They consider it childish pranks. They have made up and are even going on trips together.”
The defendant was sentenced by the court to 50 hours of community service. “I am going to take responsibility for this," he said. "I want to sincerely apologise, I mean that from the bottom of my heart. That is not who I normally am."
