Senior Reporter
derek.achong@guardian.co.tt
A taxi driver from San Juan has been sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl over a decade ago.
Nigel Toussaint was convicted of two charges of having sex with a minor and buggery at the end of his judge-alone trial before Justice Kathy-Ann Waterman-Latchoo, last Monday, and was sentenced on Tuesday.
Toussaint was accused of attacking the teen on two occasions during the Carnival season in February 2012.
The first incident occurred after the girl left steelpan practice and sought a taxi to take her home.
Toussaint, who was 23 years old at the time, reportedly picked up the girl and her friend, who were both dressed in their school uniforms.
After dropping her friend off, Toussaint, who knew the victim from before as he is the uncle of one of her other friends, drove to a desolate area where he raped and buggered her.
He then dropped her off by her street corner after she promised not to tell her mother what transpired.
Several weeks later, he picked up the girl at the taxi stand after she left school. He took her to his house in San Juan where he had sex with her before dropping her home.
She eventually told her mother, who took her to the police station to make a report.
Toussaint was charged after she was medically examined.
Toussaint did not testify in his defence but brought his mother as a witness.
While his mother initially claimed that he was with her at the time the girl claimed that she was attacked, she (the mother) admitted that she could not provide him with an alibi when she was cross-examined by prosecutor Dylan Martin.
Justice Waterman-Latchoo sentenced him to seven years in prison for each of the sexual offences.
She ordered that the sentences be served concurrently meaning that he would be released after serving seven years.
He received the seven-year sentence for buggery as at the time he was convicted the Court of Appeal had not ruled on the constitutionality of segments of the Sexual Offences Act pertaining to buggery and serious indecency.
Delivering a judgment on Tuesday afternoon, three judges of the Court of Appeal ruled that the segments were unconstitutional as they substituted the provisions of the Offences Against the Person Act 1925, which first introduced the offences.
In so doing, they reduced the 25-year maximum sentence for buggery under the Sexual Offences Act to the five-year sentence in the colonial-age legislation.
As part of his sentence, Justice Waterman-Latchoo ordered him to register as a sex offender within a week of his eventual release.
He was also ordered to report to the police every three months for five years upon his release.
The Commissioner of Police was ordered to publish his name and details of his conviction on the Public Sex Offender Website within 14 days.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) was also represented by Niara Boodan.
