Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@ guardian.co.tt

A Moru­ga man, con­vict­ed of rap­ing and mo­lest­ing his daugh­ter, has been sen­tenced to 20 years in prison.

The man, who can­not be iden­ti­fied to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of the vic­tim, was ini­tial­ly charged with three counts of in­cest but was on­ly con­vict­ed of two of the of­fences by a nine-mem­ber ju­ry be­fore Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds in April.

While the ju­ry found him not guilty over one of the in­cest charges, they found him guilty of the less­er of­fence of in­de­cent as­sault.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for the man yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds de­cid­ed on a start­ing point of 15 years in prison for the first in­cest charge and 18 years in prison for the oth­er as it re­lat­ed to the last at­tack on his daugh­ter which demon­strat­ed a pat­tern of abuse.

She chose a start­ing point of three years for in­de­cent as­sault.

Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds in­creased the start­ing point for the two in­cest charges by two years and the in­de­cent as­sault charge by a year as she not­ed that he showed no re­morse for his ac­tions.

She al­so point­ed out that he co­erced his daugh­ter in­to giv­ing a statu­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tion in 2019 in which she claimed that she fab­ri­cat­ed the claims against him.

The de­c­la­ra­tion was chal­lenged at the tri­al and the vic­tim ad­mit­ted that it was not true.

Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds de­duct­ed the 342 days he spent on re­mand be­fore fac­ing tri­al and af­ter his con­vic­tion in April.

She or­dered that the sen­tences run con­cur­rent­ly mean­ing that he would be re­leased af­ter serv­ing the largest sen­tence which stood at a lit­tle over 19 years.

As part of her sen­tence, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds or­dered that he reg­is­ter as a sex of­fend­er for 10 years up­on his re­lease and be added to the pub­lic sex of­fend­ers’ reg­istry.

His lawyers had ob­ject­ed to the move as they claimed that he would be in his 70s when he is even­tu­al­ly re­leased. Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds not­ed that his age was not a fac­tor to be con­sid­ered.

The man was ac­cused of at­tack­ing his daugh­ter three times be­tween Ju­ly 2005 and March 2006 at the fam­i­ly’s home.

In pass­ing the sen­tence, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds read from a vic­tim im­pact state­ment in which his daugh­ter de­tailed the ef­fect of the abuse on her life.

“I was the vic­tim of abuse by some­one who was sup­posed to pro­tect me,” she said, as she said that she still suf­fered from psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fects.

Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds al­so en­cour­aged NGOs to con­tin­ue their work to as­sist child abuse vic­tims.

“We need to cre­ate more safe places for chil­dren whose homes are hell,” she said.

The case was pros­e­cut­ed by Nor­ma Pe­ters, while Kamei­ka Pe­ters and Shawn Mor­ris rep­re­sent­ed the man.