A Grand Court jury on Monday heard the evidence of a 13-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by a man 10 years older than her, who she said had befriended her over Snapchat.
In a recorded video of the girl’s police interview in 2023, the girl described how she had corresponded with the man for weeks before meeting him for the first time at the poolside of a hotel where her mother works, getting in a hot tub with him, and later having a sexual encounter with him in a bathroom near the pool.
The Compass cannot name the man accused of the offences as Grand Court Justice Marlene Carter, who is presiding over the trial, has ordered that the defendant not be identified in media reports of the case going forward.
The 24-year-old man faces five charges – having sexual communications with a child; meeting a child after sexual communications; two charges of indecent assault; and an additional charge of rape. He denies the allegations.
The girl, who is now 14 years old, told police in her interview that she had met up with the defendant at the hotel, after she accompanied her mother to work on the morning of 6 March last year, as she had no school that day. While her mother went to work, she spent time at the hot tub and pool.
She told the man, who she said she thought was about “17 or older”, that she was at the hotel and he said he would come by. Although she had never met him before, she said she recognised him because they had exchanged photos and videos over Snapchat – an app in which messages disappear after 24 hours.
To avoid drawing the suspicions of her mother, who regularly checked her phone, the girl said she had saved his contact number under the name of one of her female school friends.
The girl described getting in the hotel’s hot tub with him, and him pulling her onto his lap and “moving back and forth”. She said she was afraid people at the hotel would see them, so suggested they go to the nearby bathroom.
She described him molesting her in the bathroom and attempting to have penetrative sex.
The girl told police that when she told him that it hurt, he stopped and they left the bathroom.
She said she had told him she was 13 years old and was in Year 9 in school. During their Snapchat conversations, she said, he had asked her to send him several nude pictures of herself, which she did, as well as a video of her in the shower. He had also sent her images of his private parts, she told police.
All the messages, photos and videos disappeared from the app, which she later entirely deleted from her phone, she said.
Disappearing messages
The girl’s mother, who also gave evidence on Monday, said she regularly checked her daughter’s phone and tablet because her children were not allowed to be on social media. She said it appeared the girl deleted the app from her phone every day, so her mother could not see she was on it.
The teen, at times crying during her police interview, described how her mother had come to find her by the poolside and discovered the defendant’s phone, car keys and shirt on her lounger. When she asked who owned them, the girl said she did not know. The defendant then appeared and said they were his, and he hadn’t realised someone else was using the lounger. He took his belongings from the mother and left.
The girl continued to deny to her mother that she knew the man, but later that afternoon, at home, when the mother, still suspicious, said she was going to check the hotel’s security cameras, the teen admitted she had gone into the bathroom with the defendant, and eventually said what had happened.
Her mother contacted the police and the girl was examined at the hospital, where it was determined sexual activity had taken place.
Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Keith Myers, the girl admitted she had initially lied to police when she told them the man at the hotel had been a stranger, because she wanted to protect him.
She denied Myers’ assertion that she had not told the man how old she was before meeting him at the hotel.
Asked by Myers why she had deleted the messages between her and the man, she replied, “Because I did not want my mom or anyone to see anything.”
Mother’s evidence
The girl’s mother, in her evidence, described how her suspicions were raised after she had spent nearly half an hour searching for her daughter around the hotel’s pool and on the beach, because she did not normally disappear like that.
She told the court that after searching for her daughter, she went to the sun lounger by the pool that her daughter had been using, and found not just her phone and tablet, but another phone. When she looked at the screen, she said, she could see there was a missed call from a person. “It was a little girl with glitter over her face, so I figured that maybe [my daughter] had told one of her friends, who also wasn’t in school, to maybe come to the property, and was on the beach with her.”
She said when she and her daughter went back to their home at lunchtime that day, she had bluffed the girl into thinking she had access to the hotel’s security cameras, and that’s when the child admitted she had been in the bathroom with the defendant. The mother said the girl told her the man’s first name, and she searched for anyone with that name in Cayman on Facebook.
She came across the man’s Facebook page and asked her daughter if it was his, and the girl said it was, the mother told the jury. She contacted the hotel director and told him what happened, and with him went through the hotel’s CCTV, where they found footage of him.
She also showed the man’s Facebook page to staff at the hotel, asking if they knew him. A server recognised him and the mother was able to obtain the man’s mother’s phone number, and called her, asking for her son’s contact details and telling her what had happened, she said.
She gave those details to the police, who later arrested him.
The trial continues on Tuesday, beginning with cross-examination of the mother.
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