Abusive husband remorseful after spending time in jail

After spending two weeks in prison, a reportedly abusive husband was sure that he didn’t want to go back.

David Bascombe pleaded guilty two weeks ago to two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and threatening to kill his wife Keziah Bascombe.

Bascombe, against who numerous reports of physical and verbal abuse to his 15 year spouse were made in the past, was sent to prison for two weeks while the court pondered his sentence.

“How was your stay?” Senior Magistrate Rickie Burnett asked the defendant yesterday at the Kingstown Magistrate’s Court.

“Good so far,” the defendant replied, while his tone betrayed the opposite.

“Your stay at Her Majesty’s Prison was good so far?” the Senior Magistrate returned.

Bascombe reassured the magistrate that he had learned from the mistake he made.

He was then reminded that he hadn’t been sentenced yet, and asked, given his earlier answer, whether he wanted to go back to prison.

The defendant said that he was “very, very sorry” and that he wouldn’t do it again. “I don’t want to go back round prison. I sure I will not do that again,” he stated. He said that he read the Bible every day while in prison, and prayed.

He was asked if he didn’t read it at home, and he replied that he did sometimes.

Turning to the wife, the magistrate asked her if she had found a place to stay, as previously she said she would move out. Keziah said that she had tried but “I don’t have nowhere.”

Then she started telling a story where the defendant’s mother had met her and told her that she wasn’t afraid to go to jail. “Ah bare abuse me ah get in that place from all ah dem,” she stated. She said she had made up her mind to leave her husband.

Burnett informed that he was not thinking of a custodial sentence, that he had remanded the defendant for two weeks for “a particular reason,” and that he thought that this purpose had been served.

He said that he was going to ‘send him out’ but that the problem remains, as the two of them still live in the same house, and there would still be continued tension.

“I’m not going to trouble my wife anymore…I go jail and I don’t want to go back jail anymore,” the defendant stated.

Burnett said that while the public might say “why didn’t the magistrate do x, y and z…but I cannot read the minds of men and women.”

He asked the wife if she wanted compensation from her husband, to which she paused to think and then responded, “yeah, yeah, yeah.” When asked how much she wanted, she said $3000.

Burnett reduced this amount to $2500, to be paid by January 3, 2019. He bonded the defendant for one year in the sum of $5,000. If he breaches the terms of this bond, and cannot pay $5000, then he will spend 12 months in prison.

“That is meant for you to behave yourself,” he told Bascombe.

The defendant had previously caused his wife to lose consciousness after he pushed her to the ground and she hit her head. The incident had occurred at their home in Vermont on April 13, and had stemmed from a disagreement about laundry.