Man Accused of Incest Denies Allegations in Supreme Court Trial

“It never happened!”

This was the strong assertion of the man accused of two counts of incest against his daughter, as his trial continued in Supreme Court No. 2 on Thursday.

Choosing to take the witness stand, the father answered questions for over an hour, from his lawyers Alvan Babb and Veronica McFarlane and prosecutors Principal State Counsel Olivia Davis and State Counsel Eleazar Williams.

Testifying in front of a nine-member jury and Justice Randall Worrell, he denied claims that he had sex with his child, then under the age of 14, between 2005 and 2011.

Asked by Babb what had happened on the day before the police turned up at his house on October 7, 2013, he said he had sent his 14-year-old daughter shopping in town to buy clothes for herself but the clothes she purchased were “not appropriate for her age and her body size and I told her she would not be getting those clothes”.

He said she was not pleased and went over to his mother’s nearby home and did not return to his house that night.

According to the accused, the next time he saw the teenager was when she brought the police to his home and they told him of the investigation into him having sex with her.

The lead counsel asked: “Did you have sex with her at any time?” The accused responded, “Never, Sir!”

Asked whether he was present as the police, the complainant and her aunt headed into two of the bedrooms, he replied that he was held by a police officer next to the middle bedroom and could see as they entered the bedrooms.

When Babb inquired if he could see or hear as the girl pointed out things in the rooms, he stated that when the group was in the front bedroom, he could hear her aunt saying, “Here is where he did it.”

“The police officer said he did not want to hear her, he wanted to hear [the complainant],” the accused recalled.

“Did you hear her say anything?” Babb asked.

“No, Sir,” he responded.

Babb also put the question of the complainant’s paternity to the accused, asking whether he ever had a DNA test to prove that she was actually his daughter.

The accused man said “no”, stating that even though he and the teen’s mother had “an off-and-on” relationship, he had accepted when the woman told him the child was his.

He testified that he only doubted this when, at the end of their relationship, she had told him that another man was the child’s father. However, the accused said, that comment and the blank space in the ‘Father’s Name’ field on the child’s birth certificate had not changed his opinion of her paternity as he had “formed a bond with the child and continued to treat her as my child”, which led to him filing for custody.

In addition to this, the man, who has no other children, told the court that he had acted towards her as a father would, even willing his estate to her in spite of the mother’s declaration.

Describing her as a quiet child when she was younger, he said that the complainant became “a bit rebellious” after she entered secondary school.

“She would go places she wasn’t supposed to be going without permission and she stole some money from my mom and my sister,” he testified.

In 2011, he said the Child Care Board (CCB) sent him a letter asking him and his daughter to come in, due to a report of there being “condoms all around my house”. During the meeting, he was told to take her to the CCB’s doctor for an examination, which he did. However, he admitted that when he was asked to return to discuss the findings he did not go.

“I told them I had done nothing wrong. The Child Care Board does not keep secrets and if there is a problem, take it to the police,” he said, adding that he never heard back from the CCB and police never came to him.

In her cross-examination, Davis asked the accused if he ever had to pay court-ordered child maintenance for the complainant and when he replied in the affirmative, she questioned why he had not gotten a DNA test at that time.

He responded that while having a doubt, he continued to care for the child.

The prosecutor also asked about his application for custody after the girl’s mother got married.

“[The complainant] was being abused. I complained to the Child Care Board and the court awarded me custody,” he stated.

“I put it to you that you had sex with [the complainant] when she was in Class One at primary school. I put it to you that you had sex with her when she was at secondary school,” Davis asserted.

“No, it never happened,” the father replied.

“I put it to you that that night, the argument about clothes was all a ruse to get her to come back by you so you could have sex with her,” the prosecutor pressed.

The accused man answered: “After I denied her the clothes, she went cross by my mother.”

Closing submissions are scheduled for October 12.