The jury in the McKeeva Bush rape trial on Monday watched a police interview with the alleged victim, who told officers she “froze” in shock and confusion as she was sexually assaulted by the veteran politician as she was driving him home.
The complainant in the case, who was a mother of two in her late 20s when the alleged offence occurred some time in 2000, broke down several times during the police interview, sometimes sobbing and screaming.
An edited video of the interview, recorded in 2022 and lasting two-and-a-quarter hours, was played to the jury of four women and three men on Monday morning. In the afternoon, the woman appeared in court in person to be questioned by the prosecution and defence.
She said in her police interview that she had gone to the Sea Inn Bar in George Town to pick up her mother, who had been drinking there. Also at the bar that night, she said, were a number of local politicians, including Bush, Alden McLaughlin and Kurt Tibbetts.
She told police she believed they were gathered there to mark either McLaughlin being introduced as a political candidate or him winning his first term in office – she could not remember which, she said.
At some point, as everyone was leaving the bar, she said, there was a discussion about how Bush could get home, as he was inebriated and was unable to drive. It was decided that she would drive him to his home in West Bay in his Ford Expedition, and then someone would collect her and bring her back to her car, she told officers.
Somewhere along West Bay Road, she said, Bush asked her to pull off the road. She assumed he wanted to relieve himself, so somewhere past Marquee Plaza, she turned the vehicle to the right onto a dark road covered in marl with “mangrove-type bushes” along it.
‘I was in the middle of nowhere in the dark’
She told the police officers that after she stopped the car, Bush began kissing her face and upper body. He got out of the car and came around to the driver-side door and “he started kissing up on me and slobbering on me. I could feel his tongue all over my face and upper body”.
Asked by police how she had responded to this, she said, “I just froze.”
“I didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “I was scared. I was in the middle of nowhere in the dark and there was this man, he was much bigger than me. What was I to do? I did what he told me to do.”
She said he told her to get out of the vehicle, though “not in a threatening” way.
She said she had been wearing jeans and has no memory of removing them, but they were removed, she said.
She told officers that Bush had “struggled” to get down on the ground because of his weight, and had then reached out and pulled her down.
“I just remember him being on top of me and feeling his big fat self on top of me, slobbering and kissing me up and making noises and talking … He was really heavy, I thought he was going to squash me,” she said.
She said Bush had intercourse with her, and then “he stood up and started buckling his pants … I don’t remember what he was saying but he seemed pleased with himself, with what had happened. I don’t remember the specific words, but he seemed satisfied.”
Afterwards, she told the officers, they both got back in the vehicle and she drove Bush home. She said someone then picked her up from outside his home to drive her back to George Town, but she did not recall whom.
She said she had not been drinking on the night in question and, in fact, rarely drank.
She told officers that she had been “very skinny” at the time, weighing about 120 pounds – which led some of those at the Sea Inn to query if she would have been able to drive Bush’s large vehicle.
Asked under cross-examination by Bush’s lead counsel Jerome Lynch, KC, why, if she had gone to the bar to pick up her mother, she had instead driven Bush home and left her mother at the bar, the complainant said she had just done as she’d been told by her mother. She said she was “subservient” to her mother at that time, and had been an introspective and shy person.
She said she had had little interaction with Bush at the bar before the assault, saying she did not recall clearly, but she assumed she would have just swapped pleasantries with him and the others.
Before encountering him at the Sea Inn, she had not spoken to Bush before, she had told police, though she knew who he was as he was already a prominent politician at that time.
‘I don’t want this’
Prosecutor Eloise Marshall, KC, in some brief questioning of the complainant after the video was played, said the woman had told police that she had said to Bush, “I don’t want this,” and asked when she expressed this.
The woman said it was as Bush was pulling her to the ground.
The complainant had given police a list of names of people she told about the incident. However, Lynch, in his cross-examination, pointed out that it seemed like these people had only been told of it a couple of years before her police interview, and it did not appear like anyone had been told of it when it happened.
The witness said this was not correct and that she had told an aunt of the assault nearer the time.
She had told police in her interview that in early 2021, she had experienced flashbacks of the assault, and at that time started telling people about what had happened.
Lynch said the defence’s contention is Bush would not have been drinking at the Sea Inn with political rivals in 2000, as he belonged to a different party than McLaughlin and Tibbetts, and was not there in the night in question, so did not get a lift home from the woman. “It follows, this never happened, not involving Mr. Bush anyway, did it?” he said.
The woman responded, “It did happen, sir. Both parties affiliated and co-mingled with each other very often.”
He asked the complainant if she had considered running for political office herself, and she said she had.
The cross-examination is scheduled to continue Tuesday.
Bush, who denies the charge, remains on police bail.
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