Rape accused not the man identified by complainant

Days after a British visitor was raped on Dover Beach, she picked out her attacker in a police identification parade. However, that man was not Neil Anthony Broome, the man charged with committing the crime.

Broome is charged with having sexual intercourse with the woman without her consent on May 10, 2014, knowing she did not consent or was reckless as to whether she consented.

Giving evidence via Zoom in the No. 4A Supreme Court, the complainant recalled going to the police station three days after the incident to identify her rapist.

“I was upset. I was petrified and crying because I did not want to do it,” she said during cross-examination by defence attorney Andrew Willoughby.

The woman said she picked out a man in the ID parade.

Willoughby submitted: “I am putting it to you that you did not pick out the accused man in this case.”

The witness agreed: “That is correct. I did not pick out the accused man.”

Stating that she could not recall exactly when or how she had found that out, the complainant told the nine-member jury, “I did not find out on the day that we did the parade. It was years down the line.”

Retired Sergeant Malcolm Evelyn told the court that he had been in charge of the identification parade on that day and that nine men, including Broome, were in the line-up. He said the complainant pointed to another man and said, “It’s him.” Moments later, a man, whom the virtual complainant had run to and asked for help after the alleged rape, identified Broome as the person he had seen with the female visitor in the wee hours of that morning.

Earlier in her evidence, the complainant told the court that she was in Barbados with her mother and son to visit her boyfriend, who lived in Greenfield, St Michael. On the night in question, the four of them had dinner at Oistins after which her mother and son left and headed back to the house they were staying at.

The witness said she had several alcoholic beverages. She and her boyfriend then went to a bar in St Lawrence Gap where they danced and she drank two rum punches. After her boyfriend got into an altercation with some people, the couple went to the Reggae Lounge where the woman drank another rum punch and danced. She headed to the bathroom but when she returned, she could not find her boyfriend in the crowd.

After searching inside, she went to look for him outside and began walking along St Lawrence Gap. She eventually headed through a track onto the beach and kept walking until she reached a hotel with a closed blue gate. A man who was sitting on the sand in dark clothing asked her where she was going and she told him she wanted to get to Greenfield.

According to the woman’s testimony, the man said he would take her and then told her to have a seat and offered her a cigarette, which she took. He began talking to her about his divorce and asked if she had a boyfriend, all the while complimenting her repeatedly. The woman said she began to feel uncomfortable as the man moved closer to her. She said the man turned and pushed her down on the sand and got on her stomach. She struggled and told him to get off, and he kept telling her to relax as he tried to kiss her. She recalled shouting at him to stop, and his response was that “it don’t make sense shouting; nobody ain’t gine hear you”. He then raped her. Saying that the ordeal lasted about two minutes, the witness recalled that afterwards, the man kept trying to kiss her but she repeatedly told him to stop and that she wanted to go home. He eventually got up and she followed him to the main road, where they saw a man on a bicycle. She told the man what had happened but her rapist denied doing anything to her. She said the cyclist took her to the police station, and she was subsequently taken to a doctor for a medical examination.

The trial continues on Monday.