Thirty-six-year-old Linden resident Corwyn Arthur who attacked and beat a 16-year-old girl with a knife before brutally raping her on a lonely road on the night of December 17th, 2013 has been sentenced to 13 years, six months in jail.
Justice Priya Sewnarine-Beharry who presided over Arthur’s trial has ordered that he is to commence the sentence after completing an unrelated 15-year sentence he is currently serving for manslaughter.
Referencing a number of case law authorities and the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of the case which she said regard was given to, Justice Sewnarine-Beharry today imposed 15 years for the rape conviction and three years on the conviction for beating the teen.
She ordered that these two sentences are to run concurrently.
From that 18-year total, the Judge deducted the 18 months Arthur had spent on remand awaiting trial.
His final sentence of 13 years, six months, was ordered to run consecutive to the sentence for manslaughter he is already serving.
Arthur had been convicted back in March of raping the teen, but his sentencing had been deferred pending the presentation of a number of social reports.
At a pre-sentencing hearing earlier this month, the court heard from the impact statement of the now 24-year-old young woman, the psychological and other trauma Arthur’s actions continue to cause her almost a decade later.
Through her support advocate, the court heard from the statement, the victim expressing the desire that Arthur would have confessed to all that he had done to and caused her to endure, referencing the wounds she still has from the knife he attacked her with, before dragging her through bushes to commit the rape.
“I wish none of it happened,” the statement quoted the victim as saying, even as she related the decline in her academic performance as she had been preparing to write her CXC examinations at the time.
Meanwhile, the convict’s attorney Madan Kissoon, begged for leniency stating that his client was a model-prisoner whom he advanced as being a suitable candidate for rehabilitation, reform and reintegration to society.
For his part, however, Prosecutor Muntaz Ali asked the judge to impose a sentence commencing at a base of no less than 17 years and for it to begin after he would have served the manslaughter sentence.
On March 10th a jury had returned a majority verdict of 10 to 2, convicting Arthur of sexually penetrating the teen without her consent.
He was also found guilty by the jury in the same proportion, of assaulting the young lady on the said day, causing her actual bodily harm.
The trial proceedings were held in-camera at the Sexual Offences Court of the High Court in Demerara.
Just under a year ago, Arthur called `Cross Eye,’ was sentenced to 15 years in jail for the 2018 killing of Claude `Sonno’ DeJonge, who at the time shared a relationship with a woman Arthur was also once involved with.
He was initially indicted for murder, but pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter; admitting that on May 10th, 2018 he unlawfully killed the 40-year-old taxi driver at his reputed wife’s 1074 Cinderella City, Mackenzie, Linden home.
The trial proceedings were heard in-camera at the Sexual Offences Court of the High Court in Demerara.
