A Trinidad & To­ba­go na­tion­al, An­dre Sted­man, has been sen­tenced to eight years in prison for rap­ing a mi­nor girl.

The for­mer se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer who is in his late 50s was al­so slapped with a 12-month prison sen­tence for in­de­cent as­sault, a re­port by BVI News said.

His sen­tences are to run con­cur­rent­ly.

In hand­ing down the sen­tence on Fri­day, Jus­tice Ann-Marie Smith said his con­tin­u­ous de­nial of the of­fences, the ap­par­ent abuse of trust, the fact that the of­fences took place in the com­plainant’s bed­room, the threats that Sted­man al­leged­ly made, cou­pled with the neg­a­tive im­pact on the mi­nor were con­sid­ered as ag­gra­vat­ing.

The court al­so heard that the mi­nor, who was 13-years-old at the time of the rape, has con­sid­ered harm­ing her­self since the in­ci­dent.

This is ac­cord­ing to the vic­tim’s hand­writ­ten wit­ness im­pact state­ment which was read in court.

The court heard that the mi­nor had dif­fi­cul­ties fo­cus­ing on her school work, of­ten felt ‘weak’, and be­came un­com­fort­able among her peers.

It was at that point she de­cid­ed to re­port the rape to her par­ents and sub­se­quent­ly, the po­lice, the court fur­ther heard.

Ac­cord­ing to the BVI News re­port, the court heard that on the day in ques­tion, Sted­man met the rape vic­tim’s step­fa­ther at their fam­i­ly home for a so­cial meet-up.

The two men then pro­ceed­ed to watch sports on tele­vi­sion while the young la­dy re­mained in her bed­room.

BVI News re­ports that some­time lat­er that night, the step­fa­ther went to bed while Sted­man fell asleep on the couch.

The court heard that at some point dur­ing the night, the vic­tim ex­it­ed her bed­room and no­ticed Sted­man sleep­ing. She sub­se­quent­ly re­turned to bed.

Lat­er that night, the young woman was awak­ened by Sted­man on top of her. He had pen­e­trat­ed her, the court heard.

The mat­ter was re­port­ed to the Roy­al Vir­gin Is­lands Po­lice Force, and Sted­man was charged.

- Source: BVI News