A 24-year-old woman tearfully testified today that her father began raping her at the age of seven, not long after she moved into his home.
She was one of three witnesses who gave evidence on Thursday as the father’s incest trial got underway in Supreme Court No. 2 before Justice Randall Worrell and a nine-member jury.
The accused man faces two charges of committing incest, between 2005 and 2011, against his daughter who was under 14 years old at the time.
The woman explained to the court that after a custody battle between her parents, her father took her to live with him. She spoke of several instances of him sexually forcing himself on her before she eventually reported it to the police on October 6, 2013.
The prosecutor, Principal State Counsel Olivia Davis, asked the complainant what had occurred that day before she went to the police.
She testified that her father was upset she spent too much of the $100 he gave her as a gift for her upcoming birthday, on an outfit. When her grandmother who lived nearby came by in the evening to collect her to sleep over, her father said she was being punished and could not leave.
“We sat there watching television and he would make a weird face when he wanted to… and I knew what was coming,” the complainant stated.
When asked to explain further, she said that when her father was going to have sex with her, he would speak in soft tones, rub her back and get “touchy-feely”.
Using the excuse of needing to use the bathroom to escape the house on the night in question, she said she ran to her grandmother’s home to tell her what was happening before calling her aunt and the police.
She said the police came in the morning and took her and her aunt back to the house where she pointed out her and her father’s bedrooms. The accused was at home at the time. She and her aunt were then taken to the Hastings Police Station to give statements as well as to a doctor’s office where she underwent a medical examination.
Davis asked the complainant if she could recall the first time her father had forced himself on her. She responded that she was in Class One at primary school at the time.
“Truthfully, it happened a lot of times. I remember being in Class One. I remember being in his bedroom and him being on top of me…. I remember him asking if I wanted to go back down by my mother and I said ‘no’ but I wanted to say ‘yes’ but I did not want him to retaliate,” she tearfully recounted.
She broke down several times as she spoke about other instances, including one in which he had sex with her while she was ill.
When shown several photos taken of the accused’s home, the complainant pointed out the areas where she said the acts took place.
During cross-examination, lead defence counsel Alvan Babb asked the complainant about the type of relationship she had with her father during the years she lived with him.
She responded that it was a manipulative one as “one moment he was what a father should be, but at the same time he would rape me”.
Babb then asked whether there were times she had to be disciplined for wrongdoings, to which she responded in the affirmative and insisted that most of those times were to ensure she stayed at home.
Asked whether her father sent her to church, the complainant stated that it was her own decision to go “so I could get away from him”, stressing that she used any opportunity to get out of the house.
Babb then asked if her father had ever gone to the church to collect her but she was not there. She responded, “Yes.”
“On October 6, 2013…I want to suggest to you that you were upset with your father because he took away the clothes from you and showed displeasure with the clothes and you did not want to deal with that discipline,” the lawyer suggested to the complainant.
“That is incorrect,” she responded.
“That is why you decided that you would make up another lie, as you made up a lie to tell your dad that you were going to use the bathroom and here you are making up another lie. And that is why you called the police and told the police that your father was having sex with you…. I am suggesting that you made this whole thing up,” Babb rebutted.
“I did not make this whole thing up. My father was raping me,” she insisted.
Earlier in the day, the court heard from the complainant’s aunt, who said that she received a call from her niece around 2 a.m. on October 7, 2013, and called the police about what she was told.
She said after meeting at the home of one of her niece’s friends, the police took her and the complainant to the Hastings Police Station where they both made a statement.
The aunt testified that they were then transported to the accused’s home where several photos were taken, and then to a doctor’s office where the then minor was examined.
She said her niece has lived with her ever since reporting the matter to the police.
Police Constable Kyle Hinds, who is a photographer attached to the Forensics Scene Crime Unit, said that on the morning of October 7, 2013, he went on duty to the home of the accused and took several photos of the exterior and the interior of the home, including the complainant’s bedroom and the bedroom of the accused.
The trial continues next week.
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