Man who abused girlfriend jailed for three years

The man who had accused his girlfriend of having sexual intercourse with a Permanent Secretary has been jailed for three years.

When the victim in a case of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, a 26-year-old mother, who has borne three children for the defendant, took the stand on Tuesday, she was asked to tell of the violence suffered at the defendant’s hands.

The young woman spoke calmly, and articulately about the history between the two, with her nervousness showing only briefly in certain gestures, and a slightly lowered voice.

It was only after she exited the courtroom that she broke down in tears, while leaning on the shoulder of a social worker.

The woman told Senior Magistrate Rickie Burnett that on November 30, when she had gone to the Ministry of Agriculture to seek employment, she spoke to the Permanent Secretary in his office. When she was exiting the office, she said that the Permanent Secretary was exiting behind her, probably because he had to do something.

Her boyfriend, who was waiting outside, dismissed his girlfriend’s need to use the bathroom, and said she could use it somewhere else.

“When I came out the door he grab me up, he hold up me hand like, you know…,” she recalled.

The Permanent Secretary noticed this, she continued, and called the defendant into his office, because he used to work with him before. Apparently, the Permanent Secretary had a discussion with him about frustrations as a father.

The girlfriend said that the defendant had asked the Permanent Secretary for money, and that he gave them $50.

On the way home, the defendant insisted that the two of them take a shortcut, which the girlfriend did not know about, through some bushes.

In a certain area, the defendant told her to urinate, because she had said she had wanted to before, and he used this opportunity to search her underwear. He also used the opportunity to search her chest for marks.

After this, the girlfriend said that he started to box her, and when she screamed, she was told to shut up.

At one point during the incident, she tried to run away, but the defendant apparently bit her.

“And then, after now, when he satisfied with beating me, he tell me to take off my top and band up my head,” because her head was swollen, the victim stated.

Eventually a bandana was used, and on the way to the hospital, the defendant was said to be telling his girlfriend that she had to come up with a story as to who had given her the injuries.

“I am thinking now, I have to try and get out of his [control],” she disclosed.

When they got to the hospital she stated that she told the nurse the real story when her boyfriend went outside. She asked the nurse to call the police.

The woman had said that as the relationship progressed it had become more abusive. “He started to get really abusive for simple things,” she told Burnett.

She also said he would use their children against her, saying that he grew up without his father and would want to be there for his children.

There were two previous incidents on November 26 and 28 when she said she had been beaten by the defendant, who accused her of having sex with her neighbour, which she said never happened.

The children have been told that their father was locked up for hitting her, “Because it’s nothing new to them, he beat me in front them before.”

The sentencing had been moved up from December 20, because the defendant had said that he was about to start a job, which he would use to maintain his children.

When asked her thoughts on this, the girlfriend said, looking at the magistrate, “I don’t want him to maintain me because I gave him the opportunity to do so.”

She added, “I didn’t have to leave that bush, nobody didn’t have to know I was there.”

The defendant said he was sorry “from my heart,” and that he didn’t want the both of them to be enemies.

For the offence, which carries a maximum of five years in prison as a penalty, the magistrate announced, “The sentence of the court, three years in prison.”

Every time that the defendant has appeared in court, he has cried.