The Tribune

By PAVEL BAILEY

Tribune Court Reporter

pbailey@tribunemedia.net

A MAN convicted of sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl will remain behind bars after the Court of Appeal rejected his appeal yesterday.

A jury convicted Ricardo Burrows of unlawful sexual intercourse on July 7, 2021. He was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment on November 4, 2021.

During the Supreme Court trial, jurors heard that Burrows loosened his victim’s belt between January 15, 2017, and February 7, 2018, put his hands into her panties, and felt her vagina.

The girl was staying at her grandmother’s residence on Peter Street off East Street. She was watching television with four of her cousins during Halloween when Burrows told them to go to bed. He then turned off the television and lights and lay on the floor as the girl slept with her cousins. Burrows placed his penis in the girl’s mouth “for a few seconds” and “peed” in her mouth, the Appeal Court ruling noted.

It continued: “She could see the intended appellant as there was a light shining through the bedroom window, which had no curtains. Nothing obstructed her view or covered his face.”

The court said she was familiar with the intended appellant as being a relative’s boyfriend.

The girl reported the sexual abuse after a Family Life class on February 8, 2018, prompting events that resulted in Burrows’ arrest, including a gynaecological exam of her hymen which suggested trauma.

In his appeal, Burrows argued the trial judge failed to give the jury a good character direction in the summing up of the case, but the appellate judges rejected that argument.

“The absence of a credibility direction by the judge, in the circumstances, did not, in our view, result in any unfairness or injustice to the intended appellant,” the appeal court wrote.

“Accordingly, we agree with the intended respondent that the safety of the conviction has not been compromised. There is no prospect of success in this intended ground of appeal.”