Police officer gives evidence in rape case

When he was interviewed by police in March 2018 about a rape complaint, Taganna Tyrese Clarke admitted to police that he did have sex with the complainant but insisted he did not rape her.

In addition, according to Clarke’s written statement, the complainant had told him she was 18 years old, not 16.

This was part of the testimony entered into evidence by Acting Sergeant Lisa Munroe Small who was attached to the Oistins Police Station at the time of the investigation.

Clarke, of Ealing Park, Christ Church, and his brother Rackesh Kismar Grant, of Rogers Road, Grazettes, St Michael, are accused of having intercourse with the teen without her consent, knowing that she did not consent or was reckless as to whether she so consented, on March 10, 2018. Clarke is also charged with having the complainant perform oral sex on him without her consent, knowing that she did not consent or was reckless as to whether she consented.

Appearing in the No. 5 Supreme Court on Monday,
the police officer read the statement written by Clarke when he was brought into the police station days after the alleged incident.

In it, he outlined having met the virtual complainant on Facebook before they exchanged numbers and added each other to their Whatsapp contacts. He invited her to come to his home and she agreed to do so. The following week, she contacted him to ask for directions and caught a van to get there.

He said before she arrived, his brother, his sister and her boyfriend, and a couple of his brother’s friends were at the house. When she got there, shelooked scared to come inside. He went into his bedroom and she followed where they talked and then had sex.

“But I didn’t force she to have sex nor nothing so,” Clarke wrote in his statement, adding that his mother was home.

Afterwards, he told her he was going up the gap to get something to smoke and when he returned, he saw one boy coming out of the bedroom and another boy went in. The door was locked. He said when she came out of the room, his mother asked her if she was okay and she replied “yes”. His sister then walked her to the bus stop.

“Before when me and she was talking, she also told me that she was 18, not knowing she was tricking me,” Clarke wrote.

During the interview with the police, the accused said that while he had messaged the girl since that day, she had not responded and he believed it was because one of the other boys had her “vex”.

He also denied forcing her to have oral sex with him, saying, “I hope she ain’t mistaking me for my brother. I never force she . . . . I talk to she after and tell she, she got police looking for me saying I rape she and she say she only say so cause videos got people pointing at she when she goes into town.”

The trial continues on Tuesday.