By PAVEL BAILEY
Tribune Court Reporter
pbailey@tribunemedia.net
A HIGH school friend of a woman who accused her father of sexual abuse denied claims in the Supreme Court that he ever dated the complainant as the defence had said in an ongoing incest trial yesterday.
This same witness further said that the photo evidence of a social media post of him allegedly kissing the defendant’s daughter was used to grossly mislead the court to believe he was sleeping with her instead of the accused man.
The 47-year-old father represented by Murrio Ducille, KC, returned to court for the continuation of his incest trial before Justice Guillimina Archer-Minns.
It is alleged by the prosecution that the defendant sexually abused his now adult daughter twice, once in 2015 and again in 2016 when she was 15 and 16 years old. Charges were officially filed against him in 2017. In a previous trial appearance, an audio recording was played in court of the defendant begging the complainant not to tell anyone of the alleged incidents due him being afraid he would go to jail.
During the defendant’s latest testimony before the jury under questioning by his counsel, he once again denied having forcibly slept with his daughter in 2015 or 2016. He further denied that it was his voice in the aforementioned audio recording.
As part of his cross-examination, Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Basil Cumberbatch struck at the defence’s claim that the man’s daughter made these accusations to blackmail the accused for financial gain.
While the prosecutor acknowledged that the defendant is an affluent businessman, he disagreed with the assertion that the charges brought against him were so he could be extorted by his daughter. Instead the prosecutor suggested that the accused forcibly had sex with his then underaged daughter by the pool’s bathroom of his condo in 2015 out of revenge for child support payments.
He further cited that in a prior court date the defendant admitted that he doubted his paternity. The court was told that the complainant heard the accused cursing at her mother to find her “baby daddy”. As such the prosecution claimed that he resented paying his court ordered child support and was further motivated to sexually abuse his daughter because of his own alleged rape by his uncle as a child, a claim that was traced back to the same phone recording.
Although the defendant confirmed that he did have to pay child support, he denied all of the prosecution’s allegations against him, including that he was sexually abused as a child.
Referring to the defence’s photo evidence of a Facebook post showing his daughter with her purported boyfriend they claim slept with her instead, the prosecutor alleged that the evidence was manufactured. He attributed the manipulation to the defendant’s history in IT. The prosecutor closed this line of questioning by stating that everything the defendant had said on the stand was a lie. In response the defence once more denied all claims made against the accused.
The prosecution then called a RBDF operator as a rebuttal witness, who said he was a close friend of the complainant in high school in 2015. Although this witness said that he recognised himself and the complainant in the Facebook photo taken while they were still in school, he said that the photo was purposefully staged and that he had no romantic involvement with her.
He went on to explain the photo was staged by him and the complainant to fend off a romantic pursuer and that he posted it on Facebook.
However, he refuted the defence’s claim that he was seen kissing the complainant’s neck in the photo saying he was only leaning his head on her shoulder. The witness, under cross-examination by the defence, also said that he was never the complainant’s boyfriend and that they never slept together.
When asked who posted the comment under the photo saying “Missing my beau” the witness said that it wasn’t him because it wasn’t his typing style. He also said that his old Facebook account had been hacked.
The case will continue today with the defence’s closing address.
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