The Tribune

Jamaican Matthew Sewell is enjoying freedom at last after nine years in Bahamian custody without trial. He tells Ricardo Wells how he felt forgotten and mistreated.

LESS than a week after the end of a nine-year ordeal that left him physically, mentally and emotionally bruised, Matthew Sewell says that the joy of freedom can’t be put into words.

The 27-year-old Jamaican national, once accused of two counts of rape, one count of robbery and one murder charge – all subsequently dropped – claimed that his life was taken away in the blink of an eye, all for charges ,he said, he never had the chance to answer for.

In an interview with The Tribune yesterday, Mr Sewell said that in the days since his release he has spent every waking moment connecting with members of his family in The Bahamas and praying for the day he would be able to see those he left in Jamaica almost ten years ago.

However, he said that the happiness of his release has been dampened by the thought of the years he has had to endure in Bahamian custody. He added that while he thanks God for seeing him through the entire process, he questions why it took so long.

“My dad makes juices, carrot juice, peanut juice – the good stuff. Since I have been home, he has shouted at me for drinking all of it, but when he does all I do is smile because I thought I would never be around him, see him again.”

“My first day home, I had a good, home-cooked meal and I couldn’t help but to cry because it tasted like everything I remembered. It was everything I thought I would never have again.”

On June 10, 2006, the then 18-year-old Matthew Sewell boarded a flight that he said he had taken countless times before. He planned to travel to The Bahamas to spend time with his father, Clive Sewell, for the last time before enrolling in the Jamaican military training programme.

“Yes, I had three weeks before I was about to enter the military, just three weeks, so I wanted to spend time with my daddy before I went in,” he said. “I had no idea that within days of being here I would have no chance of returning to Jamaica.”

On June 20, Mr Sewell was charged with the rape of a six-year-old girl and remanded to Fox Hill Prison to await trial for the next two years.

“They said I did something, but never gave me a chance to defend myself,” Mr Sewell said.

He described this timeframe as a panic for both him and his father. According to the pair, they spent the little money they had trying to get a lawyer to represent the younger Sewell.

The ticket on which Mr Sewell travelled to The Bahamas had now expired and his passport was also nearing expiry.

His father said: “No one would take the case. No one would come near it. Bail was set at $15,000. I didn’t have that kind of money and didn’t have anyone that could come up with it. They took Matthew to the prison and gave me the run around,” he added.

Matthew Sewell explained: “I would go to court and they would say the case was put off, they would say the accuser wasn’t there. Sometimes my lawyer wouldn’t show up.

“All this time I am in the prison, fighting to stay alive. There were hardened criminals in there. Before I came to The Bahamas, I had no cases in Jamaica, no idea what a prison was like. This was all new to me and I was scared.”

He recalled incidents of being forced to sleep amongst cockroaches and rats, and fighting off rape attempts by other inmates.

In May, 2008, Mr Sewell was granted bail until his trial – which never took place.

In April, 2009, he was arrested and charged with rape, this time accused of an assault on his then girlfriend.

Again he was remanded to Her Majesty’s Prison to await trial but would never have a chance to enter a plea or plead his case.

For nearly four years, he said, he tried his best to “make good of a horrible situation”.

“I would clean sometimes in the prison. I was like a janitor, I didn’t mind because it gave me something to do and the officers would look out for me and my well being,” he said.

“They would allow my daddy to bring me some decent food and help me feel comfortable in my time there, it was like a step up from my first time being there. My case still hadn’t come yet and I would watch prisoners come in, serve their sentences and leave.

“I was stuck there and they wouldn’t give me a trial. I don’t know; it’s like they forgot me in there. My cellmate went to court, he got bail and left. Then he came back and the first thing he said when he walked back in the cell is ‘boy Matthew (they) don’t know you in here’. Looking back on it, I think they did forget about me.”

According to Mr Sewell, in 2013 a prison officer brought him a bail application form and told him to fill it out and find a legal counsel to present it to the court.

“(I) filled it out as best (as) I could. No one told me how to do it, I just did what I thought was right. I had no clue it would result in my bail being granted.”

He said the process was so shocking to him that when he was summoned to court for the bail hearing he thought he was going to be charged with another crime.

“When they called me in I was so scared I was going to ask the judge to plead guilty and serve whatever time they gave me. I was tired of everything. My thought was plead guilty and they would send me home to serve my time.”

He was held in custody as an inmate of the Fox Hill Prison from April 2009 to August 2013.

Shortly after he was granted bail Mr Sewell said he was transferred to the Detention Centre on the grounds that he had no legal status to live in the Bahamas.

“The Detention Centre was something totally different,” he said. “We never had decent food, they beat us, the officers there took advantage of us,” he claimed.

“The persons in there had to shower together, the water would build up an inch high, it was horrible. We had to stay in that with nothing covering our feet – many of the persons being held, they got these rashes between their toes.”

“I would sit outside at night, I couldn’t sleep because I felt like I was going crazy. All I wanted to do was go home.”

Two months after entering the Detention Centre in October, 2013, he was charged with housebreaking, an accusation he denied. Five months later, he was accused of murder.

Responding to questions on those two charges Mr Sewell said he doesn’t understand the basis of the two claims, insisting that neither was possible because he was being held in custody at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre at the time.

He said he was picked up by the police officers, who he accused of destroying court issued documents that explained the dynamics of his two earlier cases.

“They told me I had killed someone. They said I was guilty and wouldn’t let me go until I said that I had done it,” he added.

“I couldn’t take anymore. They were telling me I did all these things, but never took me to court to answer for any of this.”

On October 31, 2014, he made his first scheduled appearance before Justice Bernard Turner on the murder charge, all the other charges already having been dismissed for various reasons.

In November, the murder charge was dismissed and he was turned over to the Detention Centre.

Last Friday, Mr Sewell appeared before Senior Justice Stephen Isaacs on a habeas corpus application seeking to challenge the state’s legal basis for holding him at the Detention Centre since November 2014 after the last of four criminal charges was dismissed against him in the Supreme Court.

The judge ordered that Mr Sewell be released from detention immediately, his travel documents be returned to him immediately and he be allowed 60 days to resolve his legal status in The Bahamas upon making an application to the Immigration Department.

Mr Sewell told The Tribune yesterday that now that the ordeal is over he is looking forward to one thing – a chance to see his mother, who he last saw nine and a half years ago.

Clearly emotional, he said: “My mother, my brother, my friends – all of them that I left in Jamaica, I miss them more than I can say. I want to see them so badly.”

rwells@tribunemedia.net