Dad sentenced to 19 years in jail for raping 11-year-old daughter (Roaring Creek, Belize)

UNNAMED DAD has been sentenced to 19 years behind bars for raping his 11-year-old daughter. Dad had threatened to kill the child if she ever told her mother.

http://www.reporter.bz/article/CrimeLegal/3712/

Incestuous father sentenced
Friday, 28.08.2009, 08:36am (GMT-6)
By Anita Nembhard - Freelance Writer

A 39-year-old Roaring Creek man who raped his 11-year-old daughter on several occasions, and threatened to kill the child if she ever told her mother, has been sentenced 57 years in jail.

When the child finally told her story, the man was arrested, convicted, and on Friday, August 21, was sentenced to 57 years in jail. But due to the configuration of his sentences, he will only spend only a part of that sentencea --19 years behind bars.

According to the testimony of the child her dad, with whom she lived with in Southern Belize, had sex with her repeatedly during from 2003 to 2006.

When they moved to Belize City, the molestation continued, and on each encounter he would threaten to kill her, if she told her mother or anyone else about his secret activity.

On August 6, 2009 a panel of 7 women and 2 men deliberated for less than 2 hours, and found the father guilty on seven counts involving incest, unnatural acts, and threats of death.

Justice Traodio “J” Gonzales of the Belmopan’s Magistrate’s Court, sentenced him to 21 years, 7 years each for incest, 36 years, 12 years each, for unnatural acts, and 6 months for his threats of death. The sentences will run concurrently, so he will only face 19 years of incarceration as punishment.

During mitigation pleas before sentencing, the father called two friends to talk on his behalf, and both character witnesses begged the court for leniency, saying that they knew the father to be “a very good person” They claimed that he was a law abiding citizen with no scar on his record prior to the allegations made against him by his daughter.

In court the accused man put up a stout denial, insisting that he never laid hand on his daughter.

But in view of the detailed information the child provided of when and where the jury had no trouble convicting him, and Judge Traodio Gonzalez imposed a heavy custodial sentence.

In May 2008, the defendant disappeared on the day his case was set to begin in the Belize Supreme Court. He was captured a year late and quickly brought to trial.