15 years, strokes for rapist

Jeremy Paul will also receive ten strokes with the birch. Paul got 15 years for kidnapping, 15 years for rape and ten years for robbery.

He was sentenced by Madame Justice Alice Yorke-Soo Hon in the Port-of-Spain Second Criminal Court.

Paul had been found guilty on a previous occasion and sentence was deferred to yesterday. In passing sentence, Soo Hon said Paul had been in custody since October 13, 2003.

She said the incident, which occurred on September 19, 2003, was like a nightmare for the young woman.

The judge said Paul boarded a taxi in which the woman was a passenger. She dropped off in St Augustine and Paul followed her.

Paul then approached the woman and forced her into a church yard in St Augustine where he raped and robbed her. Soo Hon said the woman was very fearful of her attacker so she went along with what he was doing. She was fearful that she could have been killed.

Soo Hon said Paul decided to pounce on his victim in the full glare of other people. “You committed an act of rape on the church compound in the early morning without fear of being caught.”

Soo Hon said rape was very prevalent in society, describing Paul as a predator. He was eventually held on the campus of the University of the West Indies. “Young women must be protected from predators like you,” the judge told Paul who stood calmly in the dock.

Soo Hon took into account that Paul had no previous convictions and had spent three years in custody. Then she imposed the heavy jail terms and ordered that he receive strokes - a punishment which judges had avoided in the recent past.

Attorney Richard Mason appeared for Paul, while State attorney Kathy-Ann-Waterman-Latchoo prosecuted.