JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A Cen­tral man and his wife were grant­ed bail yes­ter­day, af­ter they were charged in re­la­tion to the rape of the woman’s rel­a­tive and the sub­se­quent abor­tion of the man’s child.

Ac­cord­ing to the charges, the man, who claimed to be a spir­i­tu­al ad­vi­sor, sug­gest­ed that the girl’s de­ceased fa­ther’s spir­it was haunt­ing her and she need­ed to get it ex­or­cised. The girl was six­teen at that time. The way he sug­gest­ed this be done was through sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion.

The first in­ci­dent re­port­ed­ly took place at a ceme­tery in Ca­roni, af­ter the child was made to write the name of her de­ceased fa­ther on a can­dle be­fore she was as­sault­ed on top a grave.

The man re­port­ed­ly claimed that there were oth­er spir­its tor­ment­ing the child and those al­so need­ed to be dealt with.

The 67-year-old man al­leged­ly con­vinced the 58-year-old woman, the teen’s grand­moth­er, that in or­der to rid the teen of these fur­ther evil spir­its, he need­ed to per­form more rit­u­als. The woman, who cel­e­brat­ed her birth­day yes­ter­day, is al­leged to have al­lowed it, lead­ing to the child be­ing raped on more than one oc­ca­sion.

The al­leged in­ci­dents took place be­tween Jan­u­ary 2023 and Oc­to­ber last year.

When the teen be­came preg­nant, her rel­a­tive al­leged­ly as­sist­ed in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the abor­tion with the use of an over-the-counter drug.

The girl, now 18, sub­se­quent­ly re­port­ed the mat­ter to her aunt, a po­lice of­fi­cer, in Oc­to­ber last year. The po­lice of­fi­cer, af­ter con­fronting the child’s moth­er, took the child to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion.

Last Thurs­day, the sus­pects were ar­rest­ed and they were charged on Tues­day.

The man was charged with two of­fences of sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion of a child and joint­ly charged with his wife with procur­ing an abor­tion.

The woman was in­de­pen­dent­ly charged with two of­fences of caus­ing or in­cit­ing a child to en­gage in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ties. If found guilty, the woman faces a fine of $50,000 or im­pris­on­ment for ten years on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion and up to 25 years in prison on in­dict­ment for caus­ing or in­cit­ing a child to en­gage in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ties.

The of­fence of procur­ing an abor­tion car­ries a max­i­mum penal­ty of four years in prison.

The man was grant­ed $200,000 bail, while the woman was grant­ed $50,000 bail.

The cou­ple will reap­pear in court next year.