A Home Circuit Court judge sentenced a 44-year-old father of eight to 10 years at hard labor after he pled guilty to having sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 and unlawful wounding.
The man, whose identity the court withheld to protect the victim, was sentenced by presiding Justice Leighton Pusey in the Home Circuit Court in July 2023. The judge gave him ten years and two months in prison for having sexual intercourse with a person under 16 and one year and one month for unlawful wounding. Both sentences are to run concurrently.
The man, who is from Kingston, had pleaded guilty to the charges.
Before the judge handed down the sentences, the prosecutor told Justice Pusey that in 2018 the man, whom the then 15-year-old victim’s grandmother regarded as a son, expressed an interest in her and made sexual advances towards the child. He reportedly “pushed” the child on a bed in her grandmother’s house and had sexual intercourse with her.
The Crown stated that the child did not immediately tell anyone about the incident. However, following the incident, she received constant calls to her phone from the convict, which she ignored. The Crown said the convicted man saw the girl on the road and dragged her into a taxi. When the taxi driver intervened, he indicated that she was his daughter, which she didn’t deny. But after reaching their destination, he dragged her out of the vehicle and punched her repeatedly.
One or more good samaritans intervened, and the man told them the child was his daughter. The teen denied he was, and a woman took her to the police station, where she made a report.
Before officers removed the convicted man from the courtroom, the judge ordered the authorities to enter his CV into the sex offenders’ registry.