Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A po­lice of­fi­cer who ad­mit­ted to rap­ing his 12-year-old daugh­ter sev­er­al times over a three-year pe­ri­od more than a decade ago has been sen­tenced to 15 years in prison.

The of­fi­cer, who can­not be named to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of the vic­tim, plead­ed guilty to sev­en sex­u­al of­fences in April, last year but was on­ly sen­tenced by High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the agreed facts in the case, 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 clean­ing their bed­room.

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

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 forced the of­fi­cer to move out of their home and then made a re­port to a now re­tired Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Ray­mond Craig at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain.

The vic­tim was in­ter­viewed and told in­ves­ti­ga­tors her fa­ther be­gan hav­ing sex with her when she was nine-years-old. She said 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.

The of­fi­cer was slapped with five charges for hav­ing sex with a mi­nor, one for griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault, and an­oth­er for se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas sen­tenced the of­fi­cer to 15 years in prison for each of the statu­to­ry rape charges and for griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault. He was al­so sen­tenced to five years and eight months in prison for se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy.

The sen­tences were or­dered to run con­cur­rent­ly mean­ing that the of­fi­cer will be re­leased af­ter serv­ing 15 years in prison.

The of­fi­cer has al­ready served nine months of his sen­tence as he was re­mand­ed af­ter plead­ing guilty to the of­fences, last year.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas or­dered the of­fi­cer to re­port to po­lice once per month for 15 years af­ter his even­tu­al re­lease from prison. He al­so di­rect­ed that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice place him on the Na­tion­al Sex Of­fend­ers’ Reg­istry.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that af­ter the of­fi­cer was sen­tenced, his lawyer Naveen Maraj im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan draft­ing an ap­peal of the sen­tence he re­ceived.

The pro­posed ap­peal is ex­pect­ed to al­lege that Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas failed to con­sid­er the fact that the of­fi­cer had a clean crim­i­nal record be­fore be­ing charged and plead­ing guilty.

The case was pros­e­cut­ed by Rhea Lib­ert.