Child sex offender Dennis Evans was sentenced to ten years imprisonment by Justice Brassington Reynolds in the Berbice High Court yesterday morning.
Evans, 37, called ‘Die Die,’ a cane harvester of West Coast Berbice had pleaded guilty to sexually penetrating a child, whom he knew or should have known, was a minor on October 18, 2010. Evans had initially pleaded not guilty when he had first appeared on March 9. However, he changed his plea moments before his trial was scheduled to start on March 11.
Justice Reynolds had then ordered a probation report.
The report was presented in court yesterday morning by Probation and Welfare officer of Region Five Remeisa Lewis.
Lewis stated that to date Evans had faced 14 court charges. She said he did not complete his secondary education, choosing to seek employment when his family had faced financial constraints.
“Residents have expressed comfort at his incarceration,” Lewis said, adding that they expressed fear at knowing he was around. She described his behaviour towards the community as hostile and abusive.
State Prosecutor Judith Gildharie-Mursalin told the court that on the day in question the victim’s family had an argument with one of Evans’s family members and he had made vague threats against the child’s family, saying, “I know what I will do.”
That same day, she told the court, around 4.35 pm Evans went to where the child was attending lessons and picked her up on his bicycle, indicating to her that he was taking her to her mother at Number 11 Village. However, he went to Number 12 Village and took the child into a clump of bushes near a burial ground, where threw her on the ground and used his fingers to violate her, the court was told.
The child’s screams alerted a villager who was dumping garbage nearby and Evans escaped, the prosecutor said. The child was taken to Fort Wellington Police Station and then Fort Wellington Hospital where a medical examination confirmed she was abused, the prosecutor said.
Evans went into hiding but subsequently sent a message to the child’s mother asking her to meet him and she alerted the police. Gildharie-Mursalin told the court that Evans had designed the act to seek revenge. She also said it was “malicious and a complete betrayal of the child’s trust.” She asked the court for the sentence to reflect a total condemnation of such abhorrent act.
Meanwhile Horatio Edmondson, Evans’s attorney, indicated to the court that his client was remorseful. However, while Evans was sitting in the prisoner’s dock he expressed no remorse. It was as he left the court flocked by family members that he started to weep.
