TEEN
KIDNAPPING AND RAPE
By Petulah
Olibert
A
37-year-old Gros Islet bus driver was arrested Monday, at
9 p.m. at his home in Marigot for allegedly kidnapping and
repeatedly raping a 14-year-old Form 2 student.
The man had allegedly been keeping the teen bound and gagged
on his bed, for the past three weeks.
The young woman who had a habit of running away from home
went missing on August 3, her cousin Bertha Francis said,
and had apparently been staying with friends until about three
weeks ago when she decided to return home.
The teen was taking a back route to her mother’s home
that led her behind the suspect’s house through a thicket
of banana trees when the suspect spotted her and she asked
for help.
That was when he took her and tied her up, Francis said.
“Everybody has been looking for her since she ran away,”
Francis said. “People, at times, would tell us that
they spotted her in different locations. The last we had heard
was that she was in Bonne Terre.”
Francis said the young woman’s mother would not speak
for weeks while her daughter was missing. |
The
teen’s godfather had pledged not to rest until he found
her, and was alerted by a friend who had heard the bus driver
boasting at the bus stop about him keeping “a young
ting.”
The godfather determined to find out who the alleged suspect
was keeping.
The teen was found gagged with a diaper, and bound with a
rag at her wrists and a headband at her ankles.
Francis said the child had related that he had barred any
openings and had music playing constantly. He would wake her
at 5 a.m. to bathe and eat, and would return at about 11 a.m.
for lunch.
According to Francis, the child’s captor is actually
a relative who is very well known in the community.
“We know him to be a very controlling person,”
Francis said. “We wouldn’t have suspected that
she was being held there because he has had other young women
there, who have never come out of the house.”
The man lives only a stone’s throw away from the house
where the victim lives with her mother and seven older siblings
in Marigot.
The child related that she was afraid to speak because the
suspect threatened to kill her.
“We thank God we were able to find her when we did,”
Francis said.
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