Former Premier McKeeva Bush has told a Grand Court jury that allegations of rape and indecent assault against him are “pure, unadulterated lies”, which are being brought by powerful people who want to see him ousted from public office.
The case against Bush is that on an unknown date sometime between 1999 and 2003, while in a drunken state, he was driven home from a George Town bar by a woman to his West Bay home; along the way he told her to pull over on a remote road, requested she get out the car and then raped and indecently assaulted her.
“That’s all lies; pure, unadulterated lies!” Bush cried in his animated testimony on the stand on Thursday morning.
According to the complainant, she was asked to drive Bush home from a gathering to mark the early political career of Sir Alden McLaughlin at the Sea Inn bar on Martin Drive in George Town.
Bush insisted he had not attended the bar during the time period in question.
“At that time, the PPM and Alden were my opposition,” he said.
“I would never have gone to any of their celebrations. Plus, at that time, I did not go to George Town bars; that was Kurt and them territory. I’m a West Bayer; I go to West Bay bars. That’s my stomping grounds.”
A mistrust rooted in persecution
Bush was charged in relation to the allegations in June 2023, having been arrested several months earlier.
He claims this is an orchestrated attempt to have him removed from office.
“At the time I was speaker of the house when they came to my office, and I thought to myself, ‘what in the world are they coming with now?’” Bush said.
He added, “When they said rape, I was shocked, because that would be the last thing I would have expected.”
During an initial police interview in the presence of his attorney Dennis Brady, Bush read a prepared statement to officers, in which he said, “I do not know this woman. I have not been anywhere with her. There was no such event. Therefore, this complaint is nothing but utter lies. These are pure, unadulterated lies.”
When asked by prosecutor Eloise Marshall, KC, why he chose to answer some of the police’s questions but not others, Bush told the court of his mistrust.
“I don’t trust you; I don’t trust them. I don’t trust the DPP [director of public prosecutions] who has put together a case with no evidence, no DNA, not even a proper date or time,” Bush said. “So, why would I tell them anything?”
He added, “But I would rather go to the court and tell the judge who is an honest man that I can trust.”
According to Bush, he believes the complainant has a vendetta against him and is being assisted in her efforts to have him removed from office.
“I don’t know why she is doing this; she is a sick woman,” he said, before recalling what he says was the first conversation he ever had with her.
“It was sometime in the early 2000s when I was on the steps of the Legislative Assembly. At the time, I didn’t know her. She came up to me and said, ‘You gave our citizenships away to black Jamaicans, whoring Hondurans, and I’m going to get you out of this House’.”
Bush said another legislator at the time identified the woman, who he now knows as the complainant.
‘It never happened’
When refuting the rape, Bush told the jury that there are several aspects of the allegation that either weren’t true or didn’t make sense.
“She said I was driving a Ford Expedition. Lies! I never owned an Expedition at the time. I owned a Lincoln Town Car,” he said. “Plus I was over 400 pounds and very unhealthy. I was going to get down on the ground and rape her?”
According to Bush, the prosecution’s case is flawed as it lacked key corroborating evidence, and people mentioned by the complainant had “denied her claims”.
“Go call Alden, go call Kurt, go call the bar owner. They have all said there was no such event. It never happened! These are all just lies,” Bush told the court.
At the time of the alleged rape, Bush would have been in his mid- to late-40s and the complainant would have been in her late 20s, a single mother of two.
Marshall put to Bush that the complainant’s social circumstances made her appear as a desirable target to him.
Bush reiterated, “I did not know her; I did not know her mother, but I knew of them.”
A history of bad behaviour
During his testimony, Marshall drew the courts attention to his previous convictions of assault, claiming he had a history of bad behaviour.
“You were convicted of assaulting a woman while in a drunken state. We say this is the same thing that you did to the complainant. You, while in a drunken state, kissed and slobbered all over her, raped her and performed oral sex,” she told Bush.
Still refuting the latest allegations, Bush accepted that he had pleaded guilty in December 2020 to a charge of common assault in relation to a drunken altercation that occurred at a West Bay Road bar in February that year. However, in that instance, he claims he was the victim who was there to stand up for workers’ rights.
“I have never lied to my country. I grabbed her blouse, which I knew was assault, and I did it to get my phone, but I never went and beat up no woman,” Bush said.
He accepted that he had been to the Sea Inn bar but claims it was only on two occasions, the first on the night of his son’s birth and the second in 2021 while the country was attempting to form a government.
When exiting the witness box, Bush apologised to the court for his explosive testimony, telling the jury that he has a hearing issue that causes him to talk loudly, adding that he is an animated person when he speaks.
The trial continues.
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