Woman jailed for indecently assaulting 12-year-old girl to please boyfriend

A High Court judge has ordered Rushanty Mozel Ashton to spend three months behind bars for indecently assaulting a minor a decade ago.

In addition, Justice Randall Worrell sentenced her to a further three months, but suspended that for 18 months, as he described the case as “one of the most serious matters of indecent assault that I have ever dealt with”.

In an earlier sitting of the Assizes, the Golden Ridge, St George resident, who had been 17 years old at the time of the offence, admitted to committing the offence against a 12-year-old girl on May 19, 2014.

“At the time, you were very young. I do feel that you were led astray, but you still were at an age that you should have known better,” Justice Worrell told Ashton on Wednesday in the No. 2 Supreme Court.

Saying the threshold had been met for a custodial sentence, the judge gave a starting point of 12 months but deducted three months after considering her mitigating features—having no previous convictions, the early admission of guilt, and her age at the time of the offence. Another three months were deducted for her guilty plea.

“This leaves six months. I think the only way to deal with this matter after taking everything into consideration, is that the sentence of six months, half of that sentence you will be sent to prison, and the other half will be suspended (for 18 months). Should you breach in any way or find yourself before the court for any matter for which you can be sentenced, then the court will invoke that other three months,” he told a tearful Ashton.

The convicted woman was represented by defence attorney Dave Cumberbatch, while Principal State Counsel Olivia Davis prosecuted the matter.

Ashton had previously told the court that she had committed the offence to please her then-boyfriend Shawn Daniel.

Daniel is currently serving a sentence at Dodds Prison for raping the minor between May 18 and 19, 2014.

In her statement to the police, the girl said the two had picked her up on the night of May 18 and drove her to a house in St Joseph, where they and another man committed sexual offences against her.