The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

BLINDED for life in a 2020 acid attack, Stephanie Ann Braynen says she is relieved, but not satisfied, that the Court of Appeal has upheld the seven-year sentence of the woman who disfigured her, insisting her attacker deserved far more prison time.

Ms Braynen, who lost her sight after Pandora McKenzie threw a metal cup of corrosive liquid into her face, said she is grateful the court refused to cut the sentence after McKenzie appealed just one year into her imprisonment. But she called the punishment “a slap on the wrist” for what she considers “a premeditated attempted murder.”

Despite what she endured, she said she refuses to live with bitterness. “I feel sad for her,” she said. “I don’t hate her. I forgive her. But I won’t forget her and I won’t forget what she did.”

She added: “I really appreciate what the court did. But Pandora should have gotten more than that. She got away with a slap on the wrist. I’m totally blind in both eyes, and my whole life has changed.”

The attack, in November 2020, left Ms Braynen permanently blind and disfigured. She travelled to the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, but doctors were unable to save her sight. Now on a pension, she relies heavily on her children.

“My life changed drastically,” she said. “I have to depend on the children, but I learn how to manoeuvre in the house, do my basic things, but I am in good spirits.”

Ms Braynen believes the case was mishandled from the outset. She argues the original charge of grievous harm did not match the severity of the attack.

“When it first happen, they put it as grievous harm, but this is attempted murder,” she said. “The magistrate said that, but she only could go by what the law allow and that seven years was the maximum she could give.”

She believes the charge was downgraded because McKenzie’s son is a police officer. “That’s why CID put it down as grievous harm — her son is a police,” she said. “Pandora would’ve been looking at 20 years.”

The criminal proceedings spanned four years, from the attack in 2020 to McKenzie’s conviction on September 16, 2024. “I say, ‘Lord, nothing coming out of this,’” she recalled. “It take four years of going to court back and forth. They keep putting it off.”

McKenzie appealed on September 8 this year, but the Court of Appeal upheld both the conviction and the seven-year term. Ms Braynen said the judges should have imposed a harsher penalty. “Once you go to the Appeals Court, you disrespect what you really supposed to get,” she said. “Why you still give her the seven years? You supposed to add more.”

She said she has no option to seek civil damages. “She don’t have a pot to piss in,” Ms Braynen said bluntly. “Ain’t nothing I could sue her for.”

What pains her further is that the man at the centre of McKenzie’s suspicions has long moved on.

“The saddest thing is the gentleman she did it for, he done divorced and remarried,” she said. “He called me today to check on me. So what was it over?”

After nearly four years of delays, Ms Braynen said she is grateful the criminal matter has run its course. “I’m glad they see fit she must stay and finish her time,” she said. “It is what it is. I will live it. And I thank God I lived through it.”