Casan­dra Thomp­son - Forbes

A To­ba­go pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pal ap­peared in the Scar­bor­ough Mag­is­trates Court yes­ter­day charged with 14 counts of sex­u­al as­sault against four stu­dents.Short­ly af­ter 11 am, David Smith, 52, the prin­ci­pal of a promi­nent Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist (SDA) school, stood be­fore Mag­is­trate Glen Ma­habir as the charges were read to him.All the charges were laid in­dictably and he was not called up­on to plead.The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that the al­leged vic­tims range in ages from ten to 12 years old. The of­fences are a com­bi­na­tion of in­de­cent as­sault and se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy and are al­leged to have tak­en place on the school com­pound.

Smith, a mar­ried fa­ther of five, was grant­ed $400,000 bail sub­ject to ap­proval by a clerk of the peace.He was or­dered to stay away from his al­leged vic­tims, not to con­tact them, ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, and to re­port to the Rox­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion on Mon­days and Thurs­days be­tween 7 am and 6 pm.The prin­ci­pal was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney An­tho­ny Arnold. Mr Smith is al­so an el­der in an Ad­ven­tist Church in east To­ba­go. He is sched­uled to reap­pear on March 10.The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the news of the al­leged in­ci­dents had stunned the SDA com­mu­ni­ty.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer of the To­ba­go Mis­sion of Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tists, Wil­fred des Vi­gnes, said the church's po­si­tion has al­ways been about main­tain­ing high morals and spir­i­tu­al val­ues."The stan­dard of the church re­mains the same de­spite the in­ci­dent that is now in the hand of the po­lice and we are co-op­er­at­ing with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion as it has not yet been com­plet­ed," Des Vi­gnes said.

He said the mis­sion met with the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day and it has pledged its sup­port in coun­sel­ing the stu­dents at the school.How­ev­er, he said, the teach­ers and stu­dents at the school had man­aged to con­tin­ue their ac­tiv­i­ties yes­ter­day de­spite the sever­i­ty of the mat­ter and the ef­fect it had on the in­sti­tu­tion."School is op­er­at­ing as nor­mal. All mem­bers of staff were on the job to­day (yes­ter­day) and we are sup­port­ing the staff. We would have al­so had some dis­cus­sions with the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion and they are go­ing to as­sist us in pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al coun­sel­ing and sup­port for both the stu­dents and the teach­ers," he said.Des Vi­gnes said Smith, who has been a prin­ci­pal of the school for ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten years, has been sus­pend­ed from the po­si­tion and has since been asked to step down as an el­der of his church.To­ba­go po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.