Senior Reporter
derek.chong@guardian.co.tt
Two men have been acquitted of charges arising from the alleged gang rape of a teenage friend in a lifeguard booth in Point Fortin in 2011.
A nine-member jury took less than an hour on Monday to return unanimous not guilty verdicts for Ayinde Graham and Dennison John before High Court Judge Adia Mohammed.
Graham and John were accused of sexually assaulting the 19-year-old woman in August 2011.
The woman testified that around 11 pm on August 5, she went to drop off food for her then-boyfriend at his workplace in Siparia. While waiting for a taxi, she said, a vehicle carrying five men, including Graham and John, whom she knew, stopped and offered her a ride home.
She said she sat on John’s lap and agreed to go with the men to Point Fortin instead of being taken home.
The woman testified that police officers stopped the vehicle and cautioned the driver that it was overloaded. John reportedly got out and walked to a nearby gas station, where the driver later picked him up.
She said they went to a bar in Point Fortin, where they drank until 3 am, before agreeing to go to Los Iros Beach.
The woman alleged that John, Graham and two other men, excluding the driver, forced her into a lifeguard booth, where they took turns raping and sexually assaulting her. She said the attack stopped only after the driver intervened. The men then dropped her home in Santa Flora.
She allegedly told her aunt what had happened, and her aunt took her to a police station to make a report.
Graham and John were charged with rape, indecent assault and serious indecency. Both denied wrongdoing. Graham denied having sexual contact with the woman, while John admitted they had sex but said it was consensual.
During the trial, the driver testified in support of the men’s accounts. He claimed that the woman began flirting with and touching the men when she got into his car.
He also said she removed some of her clothing when they arrived at the beach and willingly entered the booth with one of them. He denied intervening, as the woman had claimed.
Graham’s lawyers, Shuzvon Ramdass and Aixa Edwards of the Public Defenders’ Department, relied on the driver’s testimony and DNA evidence that did not link Graham to samples taken from the woman during a medical examination hours after the alleged attack.
John was represented by Ian Brooks. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions was represented by Rebecca Trim-Wright and Cassie Bisram.
