Former Cub Scout camp worker convicted of fondling pre-teen

Rico Renaldo Edwards has been found guilty, and remanded pending sentence, for touching an 11-year-old boy’s private parts in an indecent manner at a Cub Scout camp seven years ago.

Jurors who heard the evidence in the case that was prosecuted by Principal Crown Counsel Krystal Delaney returned a unanimous guilty verdict on Wednesday afternoon after just some two hours of deliberations.

As a result of the conviction, the prosecutor requested that Edwards’ bail be revoked pending sentence, which Madam Justice Pamela Beckles granted. He returns before the No. 5 Supreme Court on June 29.

Edwards, of Sargeant’s Park, Foul Bay, St Philip, committed the offence in the wee hours of May 24, 2015 at the camp which was held at a primary school in his home parish.

On Wednesday, the police keeper of records revealed that Edwards has a previous conviction for a similar offence, for which he had served time in prison.

During the trial in which the now-convicted man was represented by attorney-at-law Kevin Miller, the victim who is now in his teens testified that he was touched inappropriately when he went to sleep on the second night of camp.

“I was sleeping and I start to feel this hand down in my private parts. So when I open my eyes, I trace back where the hand come from and it was Rico hand. So I rolled over close to the person next to me and he pulled me back and start touching me again . . . .

“I rolled back over closer to the person next to me, like stick up pun he. He [Edwards] pull me back over and take my hand and try to touch his private parts. I pull way my hand from he and get up and went and lay down next to the person next to me,” the young man testified.

But Edwards, in an unsworn statement to the jury, said he could not remember touching the boy’s genitals when he was told of the situation by the camp director and leader.

“They ask him . . . what happened and he pointed at me and said that ‘he was playing with my testicles’. So then I was like shocked, I was like but I can’t remember any of this happening,” he said.

The camp leaders who gave evidence in the case said when Edwards was told of the allegation he denied it and said “if it happened it must have happened in my sleep”.