JUSTICE James Bovell-Drakes, presiding in the trial of Rastaman Cecil Smith, for incest and indecent assault allegedly committed on his teenage daughter, will sum up the evidence to the jury today.

Thereafter, he would hand over the case to the jury for consideration and verdict in relation to the offences for which Smith has been charged.

Smith’s daughter, now 20, told the judge and jury that the acts were committed on her in August 2009, when she was just 15 years old.
She said that after she had told her dad that she did not have a boyfriend, he told her that if she had sex with him, she would be able to have a boyfriend, and would get permission to go places.

The virtual complainant testified that she also was made to strip naked for the sex ordeal, and was ordered to ‘wine’ and kiss her dad.

But under cross-examination by defence counsel Mr. Keavon Bess, the girl admitted that although she told the judge and jury that her father had sex with her on the morning and night of August 17, 2009, she had told the trial magistrate, when the matter was fresh in her mind, that he did not have sex with her in the morning; it was only in the night.

Asked for an explanation, the girl maintained that she had not lied to the magistrate, nor did she lie to the judge and jury.

Even when Prosecutrix Mr. Tashana Lake intervened to get a sensible explanation, the girl stood by her assertion, so much so that, at the end of the prosecution’s case, defence counsel made a no-case submission, which was overruled.

The accused began his defence by telling the court, in an unsworn statement from the dock, that he was innocent of the charges. He said that his daughter was a bad-behaved girl, which had caused her mother to send her back to Guyana from Trinidad. After the girl had returned from Trinidad, she had gone to spend some time with a cousin who, because of her behaviour, had to send her back to him with a report.
He said that he had gone to the bedroom where his daughter was, and had flogged her because of the reports he had received; and he later learnt that it had been reported that he had had sex with his daughter. That, he said, was untrue, and he was asking the jury to find him not guilty.

Defence Counsel Mr Keavon Bess urged the jury to give his client the benefit of the doubt by returning a verdict of not guilty, but Prosecutrix Mrs. Lake asked them to give a verdict in accordance with the evidence and the oath they had taken.