THE BERMUDAN newspaper, the Royal Gazzette, has reported that a Supreme Court jury in that country heard that the enraged father of a rape and battery victim chased down her accused Jamaican rapist in the street after seeing what the man had done to his daughter.
The defendant in the case a 30-year-old Jamaican who cannot be named for legal reasons denies two sets of charges of serious sexual assault and wounding as well as
breaking and entering and intimidating a witness in relation to two alleged attacks on his ex-girlfriend in February and May 2003.
Both of the alleged victim's parents testified in Supreme Court, with her mother saying the defendant told her his actions were affected by obeah.
Prosecutor Oonagh Vaucrosson asked the victim's mother if she saw the defendant after the alleged attack, and she said she did.
The defendant told her that if her daughter dropped the charges he would return to Jamaica to get the obeah off of him that his friend had cast upon him.
NOT INTERESTED
Defence lawyer Shade Subair asked the victim's mother if she was concerned that the defendant was aggravated by obeah. She replied that she neither knew what obeah was, nor was interested in it and that it was the defendant's problem.
The victim's father said he saw his daughter the morning after the attack at her workplace.
He said his daughter was crying, bleeding and bruised. The father said he was furious and went to find the defendant.
He spotted the defendant crossing a street and jumped off his bike and onto him. He said the defendant said he was sorry and that he felt that he was going 'to die today'.
The father said a policewoman came and asked him if he was attempting to make a citizen's arrest. He told the woman yes.
The witness said he let the defendant go but he ran when the police tried to arrest him.
Ms. Subair suggested that the defendant was running away from the victim's father.
"I don't know what he was thinking," the father said. "He wasn't running from me, he was running from the truth."
The trial is continuing in the Supreme Court.
