JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A 62-year-old HIV-pos­i­tive man, who plead­ed guilty to five counts of in­cest against his daugh­ter, was sen­tenced to 50 years in prison with hard labour. How­ev­er, he will on­ly serve ten years as the sen­tences will run con­cur­rent­ly.

The man, whose iden­ti­ty can­not be re­vealed due to the na­ture of the of­fence, was sen­tenced by High Court Judge Nali­ni Singh on Oc­to­ber 15, weeks af­ter his guilty plea.
He en­tered the plea on Sep­tem­ber 25, the sec­ond day of his tri­al, and re­turned to court the fol­low­ing day to be tak­en in­to cus­tody un­til he was sen­tenced.

In her 16-page rul­ing, Singh or­dered that the sen­tences run con­cur­rent­ly, mean­ing the man will serve on­ly 10 years.
The of­fences are al­leged to have oc­curred be­tween May 1 and June 30, 2021, while the 18-year-old lived with him.

The tri­al be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 15. Af­ter one of three wit­ness­es gave ev­i­dence on Sep­tem­ber 25, the man opt­ed to plead guilty, spar­ing his daugh­ter from hav­ing to tes­ti­fy and be cross-ex­am­ined, which was a mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor Singh con­sid­ered.

Singh ini­tial­ly sen­tenced him to 14 years in prison for each of­fence. How­ev­er, af­ter con­sid­er­ing fac­tors that less­ened the sever­i­ty of the of­fences, the sen­tence was re­duced to 10 years.
She or­dered that his name be sub­mit­ted to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for pub­li­ca­tion on the Sex­u­al Of­fend­ers Reg­istry, in ac­cor­dance with the Sex­u­al Of­fences Amend­ment Act 2016.
The man is al­so sub­ject to no­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments for 10 years fol­low­ing his re­lease and must re­port to a po­lice sta­tion to be reg­is­tered as a sex of­fend­er with­in sev­en days of re­lease.

Singh not­ed that while the of­fence of in­cest by a male with his daugh­ter un­der Sec­tion 9(1) of the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act car­ries a max­i­mum sen­tence of life im­pris­on­ment, ag­gra­vat­ing fac­tors war­rant­ed a start­ing sen­tence of 13 years based on past judg­ments and the fac­tu­al ma­trix of the case.
She added one year due to his known HIV-pos­i­tive sta­tus, al­though there was no ev­i­dence tthe vic­tim was in­fect­ed. She then de­duct­ed four years—two for his guilty plea, one for his ex­pres­sion of re­morse, and one for his pre­vi­ous­ly good char­ac­ter—re­sult­ing in a fi­nal sen­tence of 10 years.

“Fur­ther, there was no use of weapons. Al­though the vir­tu­al com­plainant de­scribed a mea­sure of in­tim­i­da­tion, it took the form of con­di­tion­al threats. The pris­on­er threat­ened to tell the com­plainant’s moth­er she was ly­ing and to with­hold mon­ey for school and per­son­al ne­ces­si­ties if she did not have sex with him. How­ev­er, there was no overt ex­treme phys­i­cal vi­o­lence in­flict­ed on the com­plainant,” Singh ruled.

She said while his ac­tions were “ma­nip­u­la­tive and ex­ploita­tive,” they were not ac­com­pa­nied by the sus­tained or vi­o­lent con­trol seen in the most ag­gra­vat­ed cas­es.

“Tak­en to­geth­er, these fac­tors in­di­cate that while the of­fences re­main ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous—marked by a pro­found breach of parental trust and emo­tion­al ma­nip­u­la­tion—they do not fall with­in the most ag­gra­vat­ed tier of in­cest cas­es. The court there­fore as­sess­es the se­ri­ous­ness as high, but not at the very top of the scale, war­rant­i­ng a sig­nif­i­cant cus­to­di­al term that re­flects both pun­ish­ment and de­ter­rence, while pre­serv­ing pro­por­tion­al­i­ty.”
Singh con­clud­ed that the man’s HIV sta­tus and age were not fac­tors that should in­flu­ence sen­tenc­ing.

The State was rep­re­sent­ed by Maria Lyons-Ed­wards, Cassie Bis­ram and Afeisha Williams, while the man was rep­re­sent­ed by Ran­dal Raphael and Kir­by Joseph.