By Latrishka Thomas
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A nine-member jury returned a not guilty verdict to a man accused of raping a woman who was renting a room in his home.
According to the complainant, who is in her early 30s, she began renting a room in the defendant’s house on June 7 2019 after having a hard time at her family home.
She said on the night that she moved in, she immediately noticed that the lock on the door to the room she was occupying was broken.
She said she asked the defendant, who was in his early 40s, to fix it as soon as possible and, in the meantime, she placed a black sheet in front of the door so she could have some privacy.
The complainant said that after she had finished unpacking, she said her prayers and went to bed.
But sometime in the wee hours of June 8, she felt someone pulling her pants off and then felt “a weight” on top of her.
She said she opened her eyes to find the defendant naked and tried to fight him off but was unsuccessful.
The woman said that she cried herself to sleep that morning and then woke up, took a shower and went to her cousin’s home.
This was said to have happened again the next day and the accused again fell asleep in her bed.
The woman indicated that she slept there for only two nights because she had nowhere else to go.
It wasn’t until around June 19 that the complainant reported the matter to the police. She had testified that she felt unable to speak about the incident for several days.
The defendant’s lawyer Wendel Robinson argued that the complainant’s statement was illogical.
He stated that this case takes “the cake, the icing, the ingredients and the baker!”
In the end, the jury of two males and seven females took just under two hours to come to a decision, freeing the man of the rape charge.
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