Derek Achong

A po­lice of­fi­cer has ad­mit­ted rap­ing his 12-year-old daugh­ter nu­mer­ous times over a three-year pe­ri­od over a decade ago.

The of­fi­cer, who can­not be named to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of the vic­tim, plead­ed guilty to sev­en sex­u­al of­fences charges in­clud­ing hav­ing sex with a mi­nor un­der the age of 14 (statu­to­ry rape), in­de­cent as­sault, and griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault dur­ing a hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the agreed facts in the case that were read in­to ev­i­dence by State pros­e­cu­tor Rhea Lib­ert dur­ing the hear­ing, the of­fi­cer’s wife dis­cov­ered that he had been abus­ing their daugh­ter in Ju­ly 2010 af­ter she found a DVD in their bed­room con­tain­ing a video of one of the at­tacks. 

While the face of the man in the video was not vis­i­ble, the woman recog­nised her hus­band by his pe­nis. 

The woman ad­mit­ted that she made sev­er­al copies of the DVD and gave one to her pas­tor for safe­keep­ing be­fore she con­front­ed her hus­band. 

The of­fi­cer re­port­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing be­fore re­luc­tant­ly ad­mit­ting to it and claim­ing that “he did not mean to hurt any­body.” 

She then made a re­port to now re­tired Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Ray­mond Craig at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, in Port-of-Spain, and a se­nior of­fi­cer was im­me­di­ate­ly as­signed to in­ves­ti­gate. 

The vic­tim was in­ter­viewed and told in­ves­ti­ga­tors that her fa­ther be­gan hav­ing sex with her when she was nine years old. She said that the at­tacks hap­pened three times week­ly in her par­ents’ bed­room while her moth­er was not home. 

The vic­tim was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and shown the video in her moth­er’s pres­ence to iden­ti­fy her­self. 

Her fa­ther was even­tu­al­ly charged with the crime af­ter an ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas, the of­fi­cer’s lawyer Naveen Maraj ac­cept­ed the agreed facts that were pre­sent­ed. 

Maraj did not im­me­di­ate­ly present a mit­i­ga­tion plea on his client’s be­half as he asked for two weeks to pre­pare de­tailed writ­ten sub­mis­sions. 

Lib­ert al­so said she would use the ad­journ­ment to ob­tain state­ments from the vic­tim and her moth­er. 

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas al­so asked Lib­ert and Maraj to pre­pare sub­mis­sions on the of­fi­cer reg­is­ter­ing as a sex of­fend­er and be­ing placed on the sex of­fend­ers’ reg­istry. 

The of­fi­cer, who was out on bail and on sus­pen­sion since be­ing charged, was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody pend­ing his sen­tenc­ing. 

The case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing on May 3.