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.

“He said he got a very big adrenalin pump taking them from a woman’s foot in those circumstances,” Mr Fitzgerald said. The barrister claimed that on one occasion Abd-el-Gowd went beyond simple footwear theft to “sexually caress” the calf and ankle of a victim on her doorstep.

The court heard from a victim who told the court that she was “dumbstruck” by the bizarre ordeal, and assumed that it was a flatmate playing a prank.

Giving evidence, she said: “I was with a friend ambling down the road and gossiping when I looked behind and noticed a man following us. I said to my friend, ‘It looks like this man’s a bit of a stalker’. And then he started to look at house numbers and I thought that he was genuinely lost so I just forgot about him.

“But when I got to my house, I opened the gate and stepped on to the path with my right leg. As I was bringing my upper leg forward to walk into the house, someone grabbed hold of me around my waist and I was bent forward slightly. He was gripping me with both arms, because I knew I couldn’t have got out of that. It was a very firm grip. I was suspended, bent over, and I’m a strong girl.”

She said that the mechanical engineer appeared to be “well practised” in the art of removing ladies’ shoes.

In a “swift” motion, he ran his hand down her leg, gripped her ankle and removed her stiletto. “It only lasted a few seconds,” she said. “He seemed to lose his grip from around my middle and I felt a hand come down my leg, hold on to my ankle, and then just take my stiletto shoe off. It didn’t hurt me and wasn’t aggressive in any way, but it was well practised, swift and quick. It seemed as if he had done it before.”

She said that he then bolted across the road and did not stop running. “He just legged it.

When I realised what happened I was just dumbstruck. It was bizarre. After that I went into my house and called the police.

“It was never about having my shoe stolen, I can afford to lose a shoe. It was the offence leading up to that. No one had ever done anything like that to me before and I don’t want anyone to ever do anything like that to me again.”

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.

The trial continues.

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