Justice - Two years' imprisonment on appeal for sexual assault on a minor

Now aged 84, a resident of Saint-Barthélemy has been sentenced on appeal to two years' imprisonment. He was charged with sexual assault of a minor in March 2011. The victim was then aged 12. On December 15, 2022, after a first instance trial before the Saint-Martin court (JSB 1496), the man received a two-year suspended prison sentence. He then decided to appeal this decision. On Tuesday April 8, the Court of Appeal in Basse-Terre handed down a much heavier verdict, transforming the two-year suspended sentence into two years' imprisonment.
The facts thus date back to March 2011. With some of his family and friends, the 12-year-old was camping for the weekend at Tintamarre. A group joined them by boat, with the perpetrator on board, none other than one of the victim's uncles. During the day, while the child was paddling a canoe, the man deliberately capsized the boat. When she was in the water, the victim says that the septuagenarian put his arms around her before reaching under her bikini top to grab one of her breasts. She says he then slipped a hand into her panties. The child reports the assault to a friend and then to her parents, but family members quickly dissuade her from sharing the story. For the next ten years, she was deeply traumatized, before finally deciding to lodge a complaint. "The problem in this case is that the defendant is someone who has money and is powerful," said the victim's lawyer at the November 24, 2022 hearing in Saint-Martin. The perpetrator will shortly be summoned by the sentence enforcement judge.