By Latrishka Thomas
Sixteen months in prison was the sentence handed down to a 40-year-old man who pleaded guilty to serious indecency of a 16-year-old girl.
On Wednesday, Kevin Samuel appeared before Justice Iain Morley for his High Court trial, unrepresented by a lawyer.
The trial began with the selection of jurors and Samuel chose to challenge and swap five but the matter was adjourned until the following day to allow for a lawyer to be solicited.
On Thursday, Samuel was represented by attorney Charlesworth Tabor and an application was made for the indictment to be put to the defendant again.
This time Samuel admitted to inappropriately touching a young girl, despite her asking him not to.
Morley began sentencing proceedings immediately and gave the accused 16 months’ imprisonment to run consecutively with the three years that he was already serving for fraud.
However, since Samuel had been in custody for the sexual offence from April 2018 to September 2019, his sentence was deemed time served.
The prosecutor was Curtis Cornelius. The court heard that on April 19 2018, two girls aged 14 and 16 left school around midday and decided to run away from home.
They both went to Samuel who had previously fixed one of the girl’s phones but neglected to give her back the phone’s battery.
The girls went to collect the battery a few times during the week but Samuel said he didn’t have it and told them to come back.
They went back later the same day and he didn’t have the battery but offered them a ride home.
They girls told him that they were not going home so they agreed to go to his house instead.
Samuel then took them to an abandoned building in Parham. He took the 16-year-old inside where he fondled her chest and privates against her will.