Guard jailed for 25 years for ‘repugnant’ rape

A 40-year-old security guard was yesterday sentenced to 25 years imprisonment with hard labour for raping a schoolgirl at Caura River, El Dorado.

 Justice Melville Baird, presiding at the Port-of-Spain First Criminal Court, described the act as “repugnant,” as he sentenced Edward Anderson, of William Road, Five Rivers, for rape, buggery and serious indecency to the 17-year-old girl on August 14, 1998. Anderson was found not guilty of indecent assault after the judge upheld a no case submission by defence attorney Mario Merritt. “Rape is repugnant irrespective of the age of the rapist or victim,” Justice Baird declared. He said the case was “singularly repugnant” since the prisoner “is a big mature man,” double the age of the victim. 

Baird added that although the defence attorney had asked the court not to consider Anderson’s previous convictions for robbery with violence, all the offences were “crimes of violence.” “A person who has a previous conviction is making a statement that he could not care less for society and its norms,” he said, adding that such a person had no respect for the law. State attorney Brambhanan Dubay presented evidence that around 1.45 pm on the day of the incident, the victim and her boyfriend were liming at Caura River, when Anderson appeared brandishing a cutlass. After searching the bags of the couple, Anderson ordered them to walk up a hill. The boyfriend eventually escaped leaving the victim alone with Anderson. Anderson took a gun from his knapsack and holding both the gun and the cutlass he led the victim into a nearby clearing. He told the girl to undress, and spread her towel on the ground near a tree. He then ordered her to lie on her chest on top of the towel.

Anderson undressed and proceeded to bugger the girl, forced her to perform oral sex on him and then raped her. Anderson then allowed the girl to leave through a nearby track. The victim made her way to a nearby house and was taken to a medical centre in St. Augustine before going to the Arouca Police Station to make a report. Anderson was arrested and charged on November 6, 1998, following investigations by officers of the Arouca and St. Joseph Police Stations. In his defence, Anderson claimed it was a case of mistaken identity. He claimed he was robbed and shot in the groin in December 1994, and has since been unable to achieve an erection. However, medical reports indicated that though Anderson had two pellet wounds to his scrotum he is not impotent. Baird sentenced Anderson to 25 years hard labour for rape, ten years hard labour for buggery and five years hard labour for serious indecency. The sentences are to run concurrently.