KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A 36-year-old labour­er charged with rap­ing an 11-year-old girl was grant­ed $150,000 bail when he ap­peared be­fore a Princes Town mag­is­trate yes­ter­day.

The Princes Town man ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate In­di­ra Misir-Go­sine from the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion. The charges in­clude sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion and sex­u­al groom­ing of the girl. The ac­cused was the boyfriend of the girl’s moth­er.

The al­leged in­ci­dents took place be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and March 31 2019, when the man be­gan groom­ing the child and even­tu­al­ly had sex with her. Her moth­er re­port­ed the mat­ter to Princes Town po­lice, who trans­ferred the re­port to the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit. In­ves­ti­ga­tors ob­tained a med­ical from Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty doc­tors, who con­firmed the child was sex­u­al­ly ac­tive.

Ac­cord­ing to the girl’s ac­count, on dates un­known be­tween the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary and March 2019, her step­fa­ther al­leged­ly showed her pornog­ra­phy on his cel­lu­lar phone when her moth­er was not at home. On the last oc­ca­sion, the girl told po­lice, the man al­leged­ly had sex­u­al in­ter­course with her. The in­ci­dent was dis­cov­ered by her moth­er, who came home to see her daugh­ter in a com­pro­mis­ing po­si­tion. When the moth­er en­quired fur­ther from the girl, she con­fid­ed in her moth­er about oth­er al­leged acts.

Fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, WPC Nicole St John, of the Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion, charged the man with the of­fences. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was head­ed by W/Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne with the sup­port of act­ing In­sp (Khan.

In grant­i­ng bail yes­ter­day, Misir-Go­sine set a cash al­ter­na­tive of $45,000 with the con­di­tion that the ac­cused re­port to the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion every Sat­ur­day be­tween 6 am and 6 pm. She al­so or­dered him to keep 500 me­tres away from the child. She ad­journed the mat­ter to April 15.