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Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Freeport man freed of having sex with teen at guest house

by

Derek Achong
21 days ago
20250604

nirat

A 37-year-old man from Freeport has been freed of hav­ing sex with a teenag­er.

The man, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held based on the na­ture of the case and its even­tu­al out­come, was ac­quit­ted of the sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion of a mi­nor charge at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds on Mon­day.

He was ac­cused of hav­ing sex with a 16-year-old girl in a guest house in Chase Vil­lage in Jan­u­ary, last year.

Dur­ing the tri­al, State pros­e­cu­tors pro­duced records show­ing that the teenag­er left her school with the man, who she knew through her moth­er.

They al­so pro­duced CCTV footage show­ing the man and the teenag­er en­ter­ing and leav­ing a room in the guest house.

They al­so re­lied on CCTV footage from a phar­ma­cy, where pros­e­cu­tors claimed the man pur­chased an emer­gency con­tra­cep­tive pill af­ter they left the guest house.

Dur­ing the tri­al, his de­fence at­tor­ney Tara­dath Singh raised nu­mer­ous in­con­sis­ten­cies be­tween the ev­i­dence giv­en by the teen at tri­al and in her ini­tial wit­ness state­ment to the po­lice.

Singh al­so claimed that the al­leged vic­tim and her moth­er vis­it­ed his home on the night the of­fence re­port­ed­ly oc­curred.

He al­so con­tend­ed that his client went to the guest house with the teenag­er to film a video to make her then-boyfriend jeal­ous but they did not have sex as al­leged.

Singh al­so al­leged that days af­ter the teenag­er made a re­port to the po­lice, his client was con­tact­ed by her moth­er’s Venezue­lan boyfriend, who de­mand­ed that he pay a sum of mon­ey for her to with­draw the ac­cu­sa­tion.

In find­ing the man not guilty of the crime, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds not­ed that pros­e­cu­tors and by ex­ten­sion po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors failed to ad­duce any sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence prov­ing that sex­u­al in­ter­course oc­curred.

She al­so not­ed there was ev­i­dence of the bribe be­ing sought through the in­ter­me­di­ary.

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions was rep­re­sent­ed by Char­maine Samuel and Gilliana Guy. —Derek Achong


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