DUNCANS, Trelawny — Andrew Hardware, a 42-year-old construction worker from southern Trelawny, was found not guilty of rape but convicted of grievous sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl when he appeared in the Trelawny Circuit Court on Thursday.

The incident happened in 2020 while Hardware, a childhood friend of the victim’s mother, babysat as he had done on previous occasions.

The complainant told the court that her mother left her in Hardware’s care in order to take her baby sister to the hospital. She said after watching the animated show Fancy Nancy on television in the living room she became tired, went into her parents’ room, and lay on the bed. She added that while on the bed she saw Hardware, whom she had left preparing a meal in the kitchen, standing at the door to her parents’ bedroom, staring at her.

She claimed that the construction worker entered the room and raped her.

The primary school student said after the sexual ordeal she went to sit on the verandah until her mother returned.

In her statement, the child’s mother said when she returned from the hospital she noticed that the sheet on her bed was rumpled and the curtains closed. While eating cherries with her seven-year-old daughter whom she had begun educating her about “good and bad touches” when the child accused Hardware of sexually assaulting her.

The mother said she immediately confronted Hardware at a construction site where he was working but he vehemently denied the accusation. The mother said his body language made her doubt that he was telling the truth.

“When I told him, ‘You know her, and you know she would not tell a lie on you’, he started to rub his foot in the dirt. He could not face me after that. He could not look at me,” she told the court.

According to a statement by a female police constable, Hardware later admitted to sexually assaulting the child, but insisted there was no act of penetration.

But once in court Hardware denied the allegations made by the complainant, her mother, and the police. In an unsworn statement he said he had reluctantly agreed to babysit the child at the behest of her mother, who said she had to run an errand in Mandeville, Manchester.

He claimed that on his arrival at their house he did not see the mother, only her two children — a baby whom he said suffered from seizures and the seven-year-old victim. He denied going into the parents’ bedroom at any point during his time at the house.

During his instructions to the jurors on Thursday, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes pointed to the medical report which stated that a physical examination of the child showed that there was no vaginal discharge, and no bruises or burns.

Reading a section of the report that said, ‘I am of the opinion that the injuries are consistent with the infliction of a blunt object’ the chief justice told jurors, “I thought about it all of last (Wednesday) night and I can’t figure it out.”

He remanded Hardware in custody until sentencing which is set for Friday, September 22 in the Home Circuit Court.

The chief justice also requested a social enquiry report on the convicted man.

Concerns were recently raised about bizarre sex offence cases occurring in sections of Trelawny, resulting in a member of the Jamaican Bar calling for those communities to be named and shamed.

Among the cases is that of a father who repeatedly abducted and raped his teen daughter while video recording the encounters; and a 60-year-old who threatened to “obeah” his 12-year-old neighbour if she did not have sex with him. Both cases occurred in one locale.

As the Jamaica Observer reported, the victims — largely from the southern Trelawny communities of Albert Town, Sawyer, Deeside, Litchfield and Bottom River — have reportedly been by and large ostracised by residents, some of whom have gone as far as to classify some of the victims as “loose” and “sluts”.

“We are in a crisis in southern Trelawny. When you can pinpoint a geographical area, it is bad; it is not a situation where it is scattered all over the place. I think these communities need to be named and shamed; they need to hear their community names being called and be ashamed that this is where they live. It is terrible down here,” said a senior counsel.