A 20-year-old man was sentenced to 18 years in prison for raping a child when he was 15 years old.

Justice Priya Sewnarine-Beharry handed down the sentence in the Sexual Offences’ Court on Wednesday in an in camera setting, close to a month after Delon Clementson pleaded guilty to raping a child under the age of 16. The child was only seven years old at the time of the incident.

Clementson had confessed that between August 1 and 31, 2013, he engaged in sexual penetration with a seven-year-old child. He was 15 years old at the time.

Child Link Counsellor, Celeste Mullin, delivered the impact statement in which the child said: “I feel very bad with what he did to me. He did something very wrong and now my grades are low, because it is hard for me to focus in school. I used to spend a lot of time with him, we used to play together. But now I do not like him anymore and I want him to go to jail, because I don’t want him to do it to anyone else.”

On Monday, his lawyer Adrian Thompson asked that a probation report be presented in court ahead of the sentencing.

That report was presented on Wednesday, when the 20-year-old reappeared before Justice Sewnarine-Beharry .

It was then that the judge handed down the 18-years sentence to the accused, with psychological evaluation.

The state prosecutors were Orinthia Schmidt and Lisa Cave.