The Police in Berbice have arrested a man who they believe may have been responsible for the abduction and rape of a Corentyne teenager after a home invasion on Sunday night.
The suspect, said to be from Whim Village, Corentyne, was identified to the police by the 18-year-old victim of the assault and the man was arrested on Tuesday evening.
The young woman has told police that both of the men who invaded her family’s home are known to her, since they would have harassed her several times in the past. “When we does pass them to go pick things… them does interfere with me,” she told Stabroek News.
On Sunday, around 11 pm, two men, armed with a gun, attacked the woman’s family at their home and relieved them of a small quantity of silver jewellery and a cell phone. The men discharged two rounds and forced the young woman to leave with them into the backlands.
Stabroek News was told that one of the men raped her. The young woman said the other man was also going to rape her as well but he and his accomplice were scared off by the police, who were responding to the report of the robbery.
The young woman stated that a few days before the attack the men repeatedly telephoned and told her to meet them at Whim dam. “We don’t know how them get we phone number,” she noted. She said she refused their demands “and them say if me na go, them gon got to come.”
After the young woman was rescued by the police, she was taken to the New Amsterdam Public Hospital, where a medical examination confirmed that she was sexually assaulted.
According to the young woman’s mother, when the men invaded their home on Sunday evening, she immediately recognised one perpetrator from Whim, Corentyne. Her daughter said it was while the men were leading her into the backlands that the kerchief he had placed over his face fell and she immediately recognised him.
Teenage mother
Meanwhile, the young woman’s mother broke down into tears as she told this newspaper that she blamed herself for the hardships her daughter has faced so far in her young life.
The teenager is already a mother of two children, including a toddler.
The woman explained that when her daughter was 13, she left her in the care of a relative in order to go to Suriname to work, since at that time she was a single mother of two.
The woman said after returning later in the same year, she discovered that her daughter was four months pregnant. The father was the relative’s son. “He fool she up and she get pregnant,” the woman lamented.
The woman subsequently took her daughter to the police and other authorities. However, when the police arrived at the lad’s house to question him, he was discovered dead as he had consumed a poisonous substance in fright.
The woman said she took her daughter to get an abortion but she was told by a doctor that the pregnancy was already too far along. “I tell she get the baby and we gone look it after,” the woman recounted.
The teen had another baby earlier this year as a result of a relationship. Her mother said the teen did not want to leave to live with the father of the child and his family and so remained at her parents’ home. She is visited by the father of her baby.
According to the mother, the teenager also helps to take care of a disabled relative.
The woman said people have taken advantage of her family, which has led to their current circumstances. “We na get nobody to look after us,” she said. “Me brother and sister deh overseas them a help me lil bit,” she, however, added.
Since the rape, she said, her daughter has yet to undergo any counselling. The mother related that the teen is unable to sleep and has not been speaking much. She is also afraid to remain at home or to return to work. “I tell she when me husband come from sea, we gon’ move and go Suriname ’cause she frighten them come back,” she added.
