PHILIPSBURG--The Court of Appeals on Thursday heard the appeal against a 34-year-old man who was sentenced in October 2019 to one year imprisonment for assault and a fight with exotic dancers inside an adult entertainment centre. The Prosecutor’s Office appealed the sentence as it considered rape, assault and severe mistreatment proven and called for a prison sentence of forty months. The suspect’s lawyer called for acquittals of all charges.
The incident of May 22, 2018, at approximately 1:00am at El Capitan in Sucker Garden, originated in a conflict between visitor Martin Richard and an exotic dancer working at the club, which ended in a struggle. Two female co-workers at the club who tried to intervene were hit.
Some of these women filed reports against the defendant. The most far-reaching complaint against him was that he had touched a dancer’s private parts roughly and without her permission. The incident was filmed by video-surveillance cameras.
During the hearing of this case in the Court of First Instance, the Prosecutor’s Office said it considered rape, attempted assault and mistreatment proven and called for a prison sentence of 36 months. Richards spent three weeks in pre-trial detention.
Also, before the three-judge Appeal Court’s panel, the defendant, who works in St. Barths and only spends the weekends in St. Maarten with his wife and four children, denied he had intimately touched the woman’s privates.
He confessed that he may have been behaving badly in the club, but denied the allegations. He claimed the dancer had blocked her private parts with her hands throughout the incident which did not last more than a minute.
According to the dancer, he had complained about her lack of services after he had given her 25 euros while she was dancing naked in the club’s bar area. He then grabbed the woman and allegedly tried to touch her. A struggle ensued when the woman tried to escape the suspect’s grip.
The club’s security and other customers at the establishment did not immediately intervene, but two of the woman’s colleagues did come to her rescue. One received a slap in her face, while the other, who hit the defendant on his head with one of her high-heeled shoes, received a blow with a beer bottle at the back of her head.
As the camera images left room for doubt concerning the question whether the defendant had actually touched the dancer’s genitalia, the lesser court did not find rape, but illicit sexual acts proven.
The Solicitor General disagreed and said Thursday that he found it hard to believe that the defendant, who had been drinking and might have been in an excited mood that night, had not touched the private dancer’s private parts at any time.
“However, the Court of First Instance believed the suspect and not the victim, but that cannot be based on the file,” the Solicitor General said in his closing speech.
He also called for a conviction of the attempted aggravated assault with a beer bottle, which caused a three-centimetre gash to the woman’s head.
“The defendant committed several serious crimes against members of a vulnerable group, who enjoy little protection. The suspect showed no respect for women and plays down what has transpired in the club,” the Solicitor General said.
Attorney-at-law Shaira Bommel stated that “oddly enough” only employees of the club were heard as witnesses and no visitors. She maintained that her client was not guilty of rape, illicit behaviour and severe mistreatment. “My client knows that he should not have acted in the way that he did, but he is not an aggressive person,” said Bommel.
According to the lawyer, the camera images did not provide any evidence of sexual acts committed by her client. “My client was angry and pulled the naked woman from the bar where she was dancing, but he did not force her into sexual acts.”
The lawyer also denied the mistreatment charges, stating that it was her client who was hit with a bottle. Bommel called for dismissal of all prosecution for the slap in the face. The Court of Appeals will give its decision December 3.
