Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Mar­tin George says he is in­no­cent of the sex­u­al al­le­ga­tions made against him.

George made the com­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at his Dun­don­ald Street, Port-of-Spain of­fices, a day af­ter he was grant­ed $150,000 bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court on charges of in­de­cent as­sault and griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault.

The in­ci­dent al­leged­ly oc­curred on March 22 and in­volved a fe­male at­tor­ney at his of­fice.

Cit­ing his back­ground as a son of a sin­gle moth­er, and broth­er and fa­ther to sev­er­al women, George claimed al­le­ga­tions like the ones he faced are of­ten made against men with­out prop­er ev­i­dence.

“The eas­i­est thing is for a fe­male to make a sex­u­al mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tion against a male,” George said.

“Then the man is left fight­ing for his life, try­ing to de­fend his name and in­tegri­ty.”

He sug­gest­ed that some ac­cu­sa­tions are aimed at dis­cred­it­ing pub­lic fig­ures, stat­ing, “Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we of the Afro di­as­po­ra have a par­tic­u­lar pen­chant for pulling down our own. This case is no dif­fer­ent.”

George de­clined to take ques­tions but in­tro­duced his fi­ancée, sec­ondary school teacher Ali­cia Motie, who stood by his side.

“I have no com­ments on the al­le­ga­tions,” Motie said.

“Please di­rect all ques­tions to his at­tor­ney, Pamela El­der, SC. I sup­port him 100 per cent and I’ll stand by him through this.”

When asked, as a woman, how she felt sup­port­ing her fi­ancé un­der such cir­cum­stances, Motie de­clined to an­swer.

Be­fore clos­ing the con­fer­ence, George ad­dressed his fi­ancée di­rect­ly, “To my won­der­ful and beau­ti­ful fi­ancée, Ali­cia, I say to you—God did not make us to break us... Our wed­ding will pro­ceed on De­cem­ber 27 as promised, and we hope to see as many me­dia peo­ple there as we have here to­day.”

How­ev­er, As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan con­demned George for what she de­scribed as an “em­bar­rass­ing” me­dia con­fer­ence fol­low­ing his ar­rest.

In a per­son­al state­ment, Lakhan crit­i­cised his de­ci­sion to pub­licly ad­dress the mat­ter “shock­ing and in­sen­si­tive.”

“Rather than show re­spect for the se­ri­ous­ness of the mat­ter, this was treat­ed as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for cheap pub­lic­i­ty,” she said.

“His fi­ancée was re­port­ed­ly left to face the me­dia alone af­ter his re­marks.”

Lakhan al­so urged the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Cy­ber Crime Unit to in­ves­ti­gate the leak of the al­leged vic­tim’s name and state­ment of facts, which were cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia.

“This is a gross vi­o­la­tion of her pri­va­cy and dig­ni­ty,” she said.

“There must be con­se­quences for those re­spon­si­ble. Sur­vivors of sex­u­al vi­o­lence must not be sub­ject­ed to sec­ondary harm through un­eth­i­cal and ir­re­spon­si­ble ex­po­sure on­line.”

Lakhan said the in­ci­dent re­flects a broad­er, sys­temic is­sue of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse of pow­er in pro­fes­sion­al set­tings.

“This is not just about one al­le­ga­tion or one law firm. It’s about the cul­ture we tol­er­ate and the sys­tems we fail to re­form,” she said.

“There is an ur­gent need for na­tion­al poli­cies, stronger le­gal pro­tec­tions, and en­force­able work­place stan­dards to ad­dress ha­rass­ment and en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty—re­gard­less of sta­tus or se­nior­i­ty.”