PHILIPSBURG--The hearing of a man suspected of rape and the deprivation of liberty of a woman who was looking after his mother was suspended Thursday for the additional hearing of witnesses by the judge of instruction. This case will continue September 28.
Suspect D.A.B. (52) is accused of having forced the woman to have sex with him on April 5, one day before the woman was hired to take care of his sick mother. B. told the judge they had developed feelings for each other and claimed the intercourse was consensual.
He told the judge they had had an argument about the woman’s working hours. He said she had been angry and had come at him with a pair of scissors. After the fight he had told her that the only way to calm him down was to have sex with him. They also had had sex twice before the incident, he claimed.
B. admitted that he also had sex with the woman on April 5, but denied the abuse and rape charges. “I don’t like violence. I don’t beat anybody,” he told the judge. “Everything she told the police is a lie.”
The woman told the police a different story. She said she had been mistreated and forced to have rough and unprotected sex with B. in the early morning hours. He had dragged her to the bed, where he had tried to choke her. Her arms were bruised and swollen.
She told the police that B.’s mother, who was in her own bedroom, woke up because of the noise and yelled at her son, telling him to stop, but he did not listen.
After they had sex, B. locked the door of the victim’s bedroom. He also took her phone away and hid it under a rug in the two-bedroom dwelling.
He told her there was no use to go to the police because there was no evidence. She was released the next morning when B.’s mother unlocked the door.
B., who has been detained in the Philipsburg police station after his arm was injured during a fight in the Pointe Blanche prison, told the court that two weeks ago a witness, who is a member of the Volunteer Corps St. Maarten VKS, had visited him to tell him that his girlfriend, the victim in this case, had “made up” the rape allegations.
Upon hearing this, the judge, the prosecutor and lawyer Safira Ibrahim agreed that the hearing should be suspended for additional questioning of the victim and the VKS member to provide more clarity.
