Grandfather gets 15 years for buggery

A 41-year-old grandfather of seven was yesterday sentenced to a total of 15 years hard labour for buggering a 12-year-old schoolboy.

Terry Benjamin, of Belmont, was sentenced to ten years for buggering the boy and five years for serious indecency. Since his sentences are to run concurrently, he will have to serve only ten of those years. In sentencing Benjamin, Justice Rajendra Narine, sitting in the Port-of-Spain Second Criminal Court, warned that this was a very serious offence, particularly when committed on children. He said it was the sort of offence that left deep psychological and emotional scars. State attorneys Kathy-Ann Waterman-Latchoo and Angelica Teelucksingh prosecuted while attorney Mario Merritt represented Benjamin. The jury of nine took about an hour to return its guilty verdict, to which Justice Narine responded: “Thank you for getting it right.”

The facts of the case were that Benjamin had known the boy for about five years prior to the incident. The boy was a friend of his grandchildren. At about 7 pm on September 7, 1995, Benjamin accosted the boy whom he found alone behind a bathroom located outside a house. He held the boy against the bathroom wall and committed acts of serious indecency and later buggered him. Later, the boy’s father, who caught Benjamin red-handed, pulled his son away from Benjamin. He proceeded to beat Benjamin with a piece of wood. Benjamin ran away but three days later, he was arrested at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital, nursing his wounds from the beating.   Benjamin, in his defence, claimed that he had come upon the victim and another boy having sex and and on telling the boy’s father of his observation, he said the father got angry and attacked him. He also claimed that both father and son had fabricated the charges against him.