A 34 year old man was sentenced to prison for attempting to bugger a girl who was 11 years old at the time.

The defendant appeared at High Court #2 before Justice Richard Floyd on Wednesday March, 27,2024 where he was sentenced to just over three years in prison for attempting to commit buggery against the young girl as she slept.

The facts are that the child, her siblings, and her mother occasionally resided in the same home in the community where the incident took place in December 2020.

On the night of the incident, the defendant returned home late and was let inside the house by the child’s mother.

The defendant slept in the same room as the girl and her brother, but the defendant had his own bed.

The child was asleep, but awoke when she felt contact in the area of her buttocks.

She saw that her tights were half way down and noticed the man standing in a corner of the room.

She was able to see his face because of the light from the living room which was projecting into the bedroom where she slept.

The young girl immediately went into her mother’s bedroom some time after midnight and told her mother what had just happened, but the mother did not believe her at first. The defendant first denied “doing anything” to the complainant when he was questioned, but eventually admitted to interfering with her, specifically, that he had placed his penis in the area of the child’s buttocks.

On the following day, the mother took the girl to the police station and made a report.

The complainant was later sent for a medical examination. Witness statements were later obtained and the scene was photographed.

The defendant was taken into custody on December 17, 2020. He was and interviewed the next day. After receiving his rights to a counsel, and having been cautioned, the defendant told the police that there was a possibility he had done the act he was accused of, but that he was intoxicated at the time. The man was charged accordingly.

A social inquiry report which was filed on March 18,2024, indicated that the defendant’s mother migrated to St Lucia when he was four years old and his father passed away when he was six. He has nine siblings and is generally in good health but has been diagnosed with epilepsy. The defendant was reported to be an occasional user of alcohol and has challenges reading and writing.

However, also in the report many persons said the defendant was an alcohol addict, describing him to be a “totally different person when he consumes alcohol.” Some attributed his alcohol abuse to the trauma he experienced as a child.

After considering the sentencing guidelines, Justice Floyd used a starting point of five years imprisonment. Aggravating of the offence was that another child was in the room at the time of the offence, and that ejaculation occurred. The sentence was increased by one year, to a notional sentence of six years. There were no mitigating factors of the offence, so the sentence was not adjusted.

The court also found no aggravating factors relating to the offender. Mitigating of the offender was that he had no previous convictions, and so the sentence was reduced by six months to five years and six months. The defendant also received a one-third discount from his sentence for entering a guilty plea, thus reducing the sentence to three years and eight months.

The one month and 17 days the offender spent on remand was also discounted, resulting in a final sentence of three years, six months, and 13 days.