Man gets four years for having sex with disabled 12-y-o
Published:Thursday | August 8, 2019 | 12:00 AMLivern Barrett
A St Catherine man who admitted to having sex with a 12-year-old disabled girl has been handed a 51-month prison sentence.
The 59-year-old man was ordered to serve four years and three months in prison and register as a sex offender by Justice Marcia Dunbar Green in the St Catherine Circuit Court last week.
His name is being withheld to protect the identity of the victim, who was his neighbour.
The sentence was imposed just over a month after he pleaded guilty to the offence of having sexual intercourse with a person under 16 years old.
He is one of two men who pleaded guilty on July 4 to having sex with the special needs child on more than one occasion in September 2017.
However, the other man, whose name is also being withheld, has renounced his guilty plea and insisted that he did not engage in sex with the then 12-year-old. He is scheduled to go on trial later this year.
The 59-year-old sex offender reportedly admitted to social workers that he had sex with the disabled child, but claimed “she was the one who lay on top of him”.
Prosecutors reportedly indicated in court that residents in Old Harbour, St Catherine, reported to the police that the 12-year-old was being abused.
As a result, investigators went to the community and instructed family members to take the child to the police station.
Reports are that during an interview with detectives from the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse, she alleged that both men had sex with her on different dates in September 2017.
... Concerns over sentencing
In another matter last week, Justice Dunbar Green imposed a three-year suspended prison sentence on a St Catherine woman who fatally stabbed her brother with a pair of scissors in a dispute over a cable box.
It means Sherissa Dixon, 25, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of her sibling, Neighton Dixon, will serve no prison time if she is not charged with any other crime over the next three years.
Last month, another St Catherine man, Jeffrey Campbell, was given a six-year prison sentence by Justice Crescencia Brown Beckford after he pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter in the gruesome stabbing death of 80-year-old returning resident Winnifred Williams, and her son, 58-year-old Michael Williams.
The sentences have ignited fresh debates over perceived slap-on-the-wrist sentences being handed down by judges, with some law enforcement personnel complaining that they undermine the rule of law.
However, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck has defended the judiciary, even as he insisted that the sanctions they impose should serve as an “emphatic denunciation” of criminal conduct.
“Too often, they (media) highlight one or two cases which seem to be out of the norm without appreciating that 99 per cent of the sentences are appropriate, some of them may even be harsh,” he reasoned.