Jensen La Vende
A 30-year-old Penal man was sentenced on Tuesday to 37-and-a-half years imprisonment with hard labour after being convicted of five counts of sexual penetration of a child, following a judge-alone trial.
The man will serve seven and a half years as High Court Judge Nalini Singh ordered that the sentences on each count run concurrently.
The court heard that the offences occurred on five separate occasions between August 2016 and February 2017 in Penal and Siparia. The victim was between 15 and 16 years old at the time, while the man was five years her senior and a neighbour.
The offences took place on August 28, 2016; January 14 and 17, 2017; and February 15 and 25, 2017. Four of the incidents happened in Penal and one in Siparia.
The Siparia incident occurred after the child left her home. After a relative confronted her, she was taken to police where a report was made and the man charged.
Throughout the period, the man knew the child was a minor and engaged in a sexual relationship with her.
Singh, in passing sentence, found the repeated acts served as an aggravating factor, along with the victim’s vulnerability and his deliberate exploitation of proximity and familiarity.
“This was not a spontaneous or isolated incident, but a sustained course of unlawful conduct over several months. The law exists to protect children, particularly because they are incapable of giving valid consent, and it does not avail an offender to suggest that the child was a willing or even an enthusiastic participant.”
What worked as a mitigating factor was the lack of violence or coercion. She added that the man has three young children. The former labourer was also credited as having a low assessed risk of reoffending, and the fact that sentencing occurred more than ten years after the offences.
Singh stressed that a non‑custodial sentence would have failed to reflect the seriousness of the offence or the law’s duty to protect children.
“The offences concern sexual activity with a child, which the law regards as inherently serious irrespective of the virtual complainant’s subjective perception or apparent consent. Even in the absence of force, the law recognises that children require protection from sexual activity with adults, and the absence of violence does not reduce the inherent seriousness of the conduct.”
Singh also ordered that the Commissioner of Prisons calculate the time the man spent in custody before conviction and deduct it from his sentence.
