Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 49-year-old man from St James has been sen­tenced to 18 years in prison for ab­duct­ing and rap­ing a 14-year-old girl in 2009.

Glen­ford King was sen­tenced by High Court Judge Kathy-Ann Wa­ter­man-Latchoo af­ter he plead­ed guilty to ab­duc­tion, rape, and griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault as his case was set to go to tri­al at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day.

King had main­tained his not guilty pleas when a nine-mem­ber ju­ry was se­lect­ed for the tri­al ear­li­er this month but had a change of heart af­ter pros­e­cu­tor Dy­lan Mar­tin de­liv­ered his open­ing ad­dress, in which he sum­marised all the ev­i­dence against him in­clud­ing DNA.

King was ac­cused of at­tack­ing the teenag­er around 7 pm on March 13, 2009.

The girl and her ten-year-old fe­male cousin were walk­ing home af­ter vis­it­ing a shop when they passed King, who was walk­ing with his two dogs.

King re­port­ed­ly asked the ten-year-old her name and the girls ig­nored him and walked away.

King re­port­ed­ly re­leased his dogs’ leash­es and they ran af­ter the girls and bit the ten-year-old on her leg.

King grabbed the teenag­er and took her to a near­by track where he raped her.

The vic­tim’s cousin ran away and alert­ed their un­cle and grand­moth­er, who were home.

Their rel­a­tives con­front­ed the man af­ter he com­mit­ted the at­tack on the teenag­er and he re­port­ed­ly re­leased his dogs. One of the dogs bit the vic­tim’s un­cle and King ran away. He was ar­rest­ed af­ter the teenag­er and her fam­i­ly made a re­port to the po­lice.

The vic­tim was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and DNA sam­ples, which were sub­se­quent­ly linked to King, were col­lect­ed from her un­der­wear.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tences for King, Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo or­dered that he serve 18 years in prison for rape, and nine months for griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault. She sen­tenced him to sev­en years and six months for ab­duct­ing the vic­tim. The fi­nal sen­tences took in­to ac­count a one-third dis­count for his guilty pleas.

As Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo or­dered that the sen­tences run con­cur­rent­ly, King is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased af­ter serv­ing the longest sen­tence.

He is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in a lit­tle un­der 12 years as the time he spent on re­mand was de­duct­ed from his sen­tence.

King was or­dered to reg­is­ter as a sex of­fend­er with­in sev­en days of his even­tu­al re­lease. He was al­so or­dered to re­port to the po­lice every three months for 12 years and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was or­dered to pub­lish his name and par­tic­u­lars on the pub­lic sex of­fend­er web­site.