Elderly man gets time in jail for breaching court order

A 59-YEAR-OLD repeat offender will spend one year and six months in prison for breaching a court order that his mother obtained to protect herself from him.

Raphael Sergeant, a labourer of Kingstown Hill, was sentenced at the Serious Offences Court(SOC) on Friday, October 15, for wilfully disobeying court order FC H80/19, duly signed by the honourable Madame President of the Family Court.

When Sergeant first appeared on Wednesday, October 13, the court heard that his 88-year-old mother had applied for the protection order because of her son’s behaviour and it had been granted to her on June 17, 2019.

However, he has repeatedly breached this order, the most recent incident being recorded on October 9, 2021. At around 2:p.m on this date the elderly mother was at home where she resides with one of her granddaughters, when she heard her son’s voice outside. He was seen walking around her house cursing, and aggressively overturning her garbage bins.

The maximum penalty prescribed by law for the offence of breach of a court order is a sentence of two years incarceration. Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne’s calculations began at 70% of this. She then weighed the relevant factors such as the previous convictions of a similar nature and the displayed acts of violence, before arriving at a sentence of one year and ten months.

Following this, as is the custom, the defendant was allowed a subtraction of one third of this sentence because he entered a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity he had.

Therefore, the court arrived at a final sentence of one year and six months behind bars.