A for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer has been sen­tenced to 16 years, 5 months, and 15 days in prison for traf­fick­ing three Colom­bian women more than a decade ago.

Valen­tine East­man, who was serv­ing in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice at the time of the crime, was con­vict­ed on Jan­u­ary 31, 2025, fol­low­ing a 2013 in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU).

In sen­tenc­ing East­man on Ju­ly 28, Jus­tice George Bus­by cit­ed the plan­ning, de­cep­tion, in­tim­i­da­tion, and psy­cho­log­i­cal harm in­volved. He said the crime was dri­ven by prof­it and rep­re­sent­ed a cal­cu­lat­ed abuse of pow­er and trust.

On a date un­known be­tween March 3 and 25, 2013, East­man re­cruit­ed the women un­der false pre­tences, claim­ing they would find em­ploy­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He helped smug­gle them from Venezuela, then traf­ficked them in bars across South and Cen­tral Trinidad for sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion. They were al­so forced to work in ex­ploita­tive con­di­tions at his home.

The case was first filed in the San Fer­nan­do First Mag­is­trates’ Court and pros­e­cut­ed by then State Coun­sel Sarah De Sil­va. East­man was com­mit­ted to stand tri­al in the High Court in 2016. The tri­al be­gan in No­vem­ber 2024 and was led by pros­e­cu­tors Am­bay Ramkellawan and Kyrn Lewis.

With sup­port from the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion and the Colom­bian and Chilean em­bassies, the CTU fa­cil­i­tat­ed the re­turn of two of the vic­tims to tes­ti­fy. Their ac­counts, along with ev­i­dence from 14 oth­er wit­ness­es, formed the ba­sis of the State’s case.

The CTU de­scribed the con­vic­tion as a pow­er­ful af­fir­ma­tion of jus­tice and a re­minder that “no one is above the law, not even those sworn to up­hold it.”