A Trinidad & To­ba­go na­tion­al, An­dre Sted­man, has been sen­tenced to eight years in prison for rap­ing a mi­nor girl. The for­mer se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer who is in his late 50s was al­so slapped with a 12-month prison sen­tence for in­de­cent as­sault, a re­port by BVI News said. His sen­tences are to run con­cur­rent­ly.

In hand­ing down the sen­tence on Fri­day, Jus­tice Ann-Marie Smith said his con­tin­u­ous de­nial of the of­fences, the ap­par­ent abuse of trust, the fact that the of­fences took place in the com­plainant’s bed­room, the threats that Sted­man al­leged­ly made, cou­pled with the neg­a­tive im­pact on the mi­nor were con­sid­ered as ag­gra­vat­ing.

The court al­so heard that the mi­nor, who was 13-years-old at the time of the rape, has con­sid­ered harm­ing her­self since the in­ci­dent. This is ac­cord­ing to the vic­tim’s hand­writ­ten wit­ness im­pact state­ment which was read in court. The court heard that the mi­nor had dif­fi­cul­ties fo­cus­ing on her school work, of­ten felt ‘weak’, and be­came un­com­fort­able among her peers.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]