A 44-year-old father of eight was ordered to serve a total of 10 years in prison at hard labour after he was charged with having sexual intercourse with a girl under 16, and unlawful wounding.

The man, whose identity is being withheld to protect the victim, was sentenced before Justice Leighton Pusey in the Home Circuit Court last week. He was given 10 years and two months in prison for the offence of having sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 16 and one year and one month for the offence of unlawful wounding. Both sentences are to run concurrently.

The man, who is from Kingston, had pleaded guilty to the charges.

Before his sentence was handed down, the prosecutor told Justice Pusey that in 2018 the man, who was considered like a son to the then 15-year-old child’s grandmother, expressed an interest in her and made sexual advances towards the girl. It was reported that he “pushed” the child on a bed in her grandmother’s house and had sexual intercourse with her.

The Crown said the child did not tell anyone about what had happened to her immediately after the incident.

However, following the incident, the child received constant calls to her phone from the man, which she reportedly ignored. The court was also told that some time after, the accused saw the girl on the road and dragged her into a taxi. When the taxi driver asked why he was treating her in that manner, he indicated that she was his daughter, which she didn’t deny. But after reaching their destination, he dragged her out of the vehicle and punched her repeatedly.

Passers-by intervened and he again said she was his daughter; however, this time the teenager denied his claim and a woman took hold of her and carried her to the police station where a report was made.

It was revealed that the man, an upholsterer, was taken to hospital after police officers arrived because he was assaulted by the group of people that had gathered.

But this incident did not stop him from continuing to seek out the child. It was also reported that the father of eight even went to the child’s school, removed her from classes, and kept her at his house overnight. Her grandmother reported her missing to the police, then subsequently went to the defendant’s house where she saw the girl on his bed.

When she asked why her granddaughter was there, the man reportedly said, “Mi find her from last night.”

This prompted the grandmother to make a report to the police, and the man was later arrested and charged.

During the proceedings, his attorney argued for leniency on the grounds that he had pleaded guilty to the charges and “did not waste the court’s time and saved a lot of the court’s resources”. She added that he had no previous conviction and has been in custody “for a very long time”.

The attorney further said the man did not put the complainant through the rigours of a trial.

“He owned up to his faults,” the lawyer said.

Referencing the social enquiry report that was ordered for his sentencing, the attorney said the report indicated that members of the community were shocked as to how he “found himself in this situation”.

“Found himself, madam?” the judge asked. “He said he had an attraction and he expressed the attraction.”

Justice Pusey went on to say, “Is it a mitigating factor or an aggravating factor [that] he cares for his children but interferes with someone else’s child who was younger than the children that he has?”

Justice Pusey said in relation to the primary offence, sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 16, the court has to take into consideration the circumstances.

“In this particular case, the court takes into consideration the friendship relationship that the accused man had with the complainant’s grandmother,” he said.

“I have to take into consideration the circumstances of the sexual intercourse, but also the circumstances around what has happened after,” he added, before the sentence was handed down.

Before he was taken out of the courtroom, the judge also ordered that the man be entered into the sex offenders’ registry.