A 31-year-old man from La Hor­quet­ta, Ari­ma, has been con­vict­ed of sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ing his eight-year-old neigh­bour in 2010.

It took a nine-mem­ber ju­ry be­fore High Court Judge Kathy Ann Wa­ter­man-Latchoo a lit­tle un­der an hour to re­turn with the unan­i­mous guilty ver­dict for the man on Mon­day.

He was ac­cused of at­tack­ing the vic­tim on April 10, 2010.

The man, who was 17 years old at the time, was play­ing foot­ball in the vic­tim’s yard with the vic­tim and her friend. 

The girl took a break and went in­side to drink some wa­ter and was fol­lowed by the man, who was friends with her old­er broth­er. 

The vic­tim claimed that he came in­to the kitchen, took off her clothes and per­formed oral sex on her. 

The vic­tim’s broth­er-in-law, who was watch­ing tele­vi­sion in the liv­ing room, caught the man whilst he was com­mit­ting the act. 

He claimed that the man was hold­ing down one of her hands and cov­er­ing her mouth and she was cry­ing and try­ing to push him away.

The ac­cused ran away to his aunt, who he lived with next door. He re­port­ed­ly con­fessed to her and she gave him “licks”. 

When the po­lice ar­rived on the scene, he con­fessed to them and the vic­tim’s moth­er. 

How­ev­er, de­spite his pre­vi­ous con­fes­sions, the man de­nied any wrong­do­ing when he chose to take the wit­ness stand to tes­ti­fy in his de­fence. 

He claimed he was help­ing the vic­tim get wa­ter and the cup fell on the floor.

He claimed that he bent down to pick up the cup and did not re­alise that the vic­tim was naked in front of him as the lights were off in the kitchen. 

The man, who was on bail af­ter be­ing charged, was tak­en in­to cus­tody af­ter the ver­dict was de­liv­ered at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain. He is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court to­mor­row to be sen­tenced. 

The case was pros­e­cut­ed by Dy­lan Mar­tin and Niara Boodan, of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).