JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, February 17, 2025

Cop in court for alleged rape of stepdaughter

by

19 days ago
20250129

A po­lice of­fi­cer has been grant­ed $300,000 bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court charged with rap­ing his step­daugh­ter while he was on sus­pen­sion for al­leged­ly kid­nap­ping and rap­ing a woman with a col­league. 

The 42-year-old of­fi­cer from cen­tral Trinidad, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held to pro­tect the vic­tim, made his first court ap­pear­ance in re­la­tion to the at­tack on the girl be­fore Mas­ter Rhea Lib­ert yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

In April 2013, the of­fi­cer and his co-work­er were charged with griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault, rape, kid­nap­ping and bug­gery. 

They were ac­cused of car­ry­ing a woman against her will from Ca­roni to a des­o­late area in Ch­agua­nas where they sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed her. 

The of­fi­cers al­so were charged with two counts of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, re­lat­ing to so­lic­it­ing and re­ceiv­ing a bribe from the male com­pan­ion of the vic­tim, who was with her when she was ab­duct­ed. 

In 2020, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty con­tact­ed the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion’s Child Pro­tec­tion Unit to re­port the sex­u­al as­sault of a 13-year-old girl when she was be­tween sev­en and nine years old and liv­ing with her moth­er and the of­fi­cer. 

The al­leged vic­tim was in­ter­viewed in her aunt’s pres­ence and was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined. 

When the of­fi­cer was con­front­ed in the pres­ence of his at­tor­ney at the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion in June 2022, he de­nied any wrong­do­ing. 

“I am dev­as­tat­ed by the al­le­ga­tion that you have stat­ed, I have been a fa­ther to the per­son you name,” he said. 

“I am of the opin­ion that some­one is be­hind this and I will get to the bot­tom of it,” he added. 

The in­ves­ti­ga­tor con­tin­ued his probe and re­ar­rest­ed the of­fi­cer af­ter he re­ceived ad­vice from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) last week. 

He was then charged with se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy, sex­u­al in­ter­course with a fe­male un­der the age of 14, and sex­u­al touch­ing of a child. 

The of­fi­cer was not called up­on to plead to the lat­est charges when he ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Lib­ert. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, a po­lice pros­e­cu­tor did not ob­ject to bail. 

He not­ed that the al­leged vic­tim, who is now 18 years old, lives in the Unit­ed States. He al­so ad­mit­ted that there was no ev­i­dence of the of­fi­cer threat­en­ing the al­leged vic­tim in the time frame be­tween the al­leged at­tacks and his be­ing charged. 

Mas­ter Lib­ert raised con­cerns over her abil­i­ty to con­sid­er bail as he had pend­ing charges for sim­i­lar of­fences. 

The of­fi­cer’s lawyer Bhi­mal Ma­hara­jh point­ed out that while his client was charged over a decade ago, there is yet to be a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry or suf­fi­cient hear­ing for his case to go to tri­al. 

He al­so claimed that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his client in­tim­i­dat­ing the vic­tim is low as she lives abroad. 

While Mas­ter Lib­ert agreed to grant the of­fi­cer bail with his moth­er as sure­ty, she im­posed sev­er­al con­di­tions in­clud­ing or­der­ing him to live with her and re­port to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion every last Thurs­day of the month un­til his case is de­ter­mined. 

He was al­so or­dered to re­frain from con­tact­ing the vic­tim ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, in­clud­ing through so­cial me­dia. 

As the po­lice pros­e­cu­tor in­di­cat­ed that the DPP’s Of­fice may ap­point a pros­e­cu­tor for the case, Mas­ter Lib­ert did not set a date for the start of the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing. 

The case is sched­uled for a sta­tus hear­ing on No­vem­ber 13.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored