A woman who has accused former premier McKeeva Bush of raping her two decades ago told a Grand Court jury Tuesday she had come forward now because she had finally built up the courage to stop keeping it a secret.
Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Jerome Lynch, KC, when asked why she had told her mother, who is a friend of Bush’s, about the rape two years ago, she said, “Because I needed to do it for my own sanity … I finally got the courage to do it and I wanted to let everybody know.”
The court heard that after police later reached out to the woman’s mother to corroborate that her daughter had told her about the rape, her mother contacted her to say she knew nothing about it, at which point the woman resent the mother voice messages in which she told her about the assault.
She said she told her brother via a message about the rape around that time, but said he had barely acknowledged it, as he was also a friend of Bush, and she felt he had sided with the West Bay West MP rather than with his sister.
The complainant said she was angry at her mother, because she was the one who had told her on the night of the alleged rape to drive Bush home because he was too inebriated to drive himself.
“She put me in that position to drive this man home,” she said, as she sobbed in the witness box. “I wanted her to know what happened to me; I wanted to have my voice. I’m tired of her putting me down …
“If she wasn’t there [at the bar], I would never driven him home.”
The court had heard earlier that the woman had gone to the Sea Inn Bar in George Town to pick up her mother, who had been drinking and did not drive. Also at the bar that night were a number of politicians, including Bush, Alden McLaughlin and Kurt Tibbetts, the complainant said, and at the end of the night, it was “decided” that she would drive Bush home in his own Ford Expedition and then someone would go to his house and collect her.
The alleged rape occurred during that drive to Bush’s home.
Fractious exchanges
Lynch began his cross-examination of the woman on Monday afternoon. The questioning, much of which related to a video of a police interview the jury viewed Monday morning, continued until Tuesday afternoon.
Many of the exchanges between Lynch and the complainant, who has studied law, were fractious. At times, Justice Roy Jones warned the witness about being combative with the defence lawyer, on several occasions told the woman to speak up, repeat her answers, or reply to his questions more directly.
When Lynch noted that she had only told people about the alleged rape in recent years, she responded that she had told a cousin, who was also a close friend, and an aunt. The cousin had since passed away, and the aunt had refused to give a statement to police confirming she had been told of the incident because the woman’s brother – the aunt’s nephew – was close to Bush, the witness said.
Later in the afternoon, the court heard that the aunt, who had heard about her niece’s testimony, had contacted police Tuesday to tell the woman not to mention her name in court.
‘Did as she was told’
Lynch repeatedly asked the woman why she had not resisted her assailant’s advances and why she had done nothing during the assault. She said she had been molested as a teenager and the experience with Bush had taken her back to that time “mentally and emotionally”. She repeated again that she had froze during the incident and just did as she was told.
Several times during the cross-examination, the woman broke down in tears, holding her head in her hands and wiping her face and eyes with tissues.
At one point, she told the defence lawyer she was feeling “intimated and under duress” by him, and asked that one of his fellow defence counsel members stop staring at her “as if I’ve done something wrong”.
Lynch challenged her claim to police that she had told Bush she “did not want this” before she says they both got out of the car and he had sex with her on the ground. He pointed out that at first she did not mention to police she had said this, later said she did not recall when she said it, and then told officers she said it while she and Bush were still inside the vehicle.
The jury on Monday had watched the video of an interview carried out by police with the complainant in 2022. Lynch pointed out that the police had subsequently interviewed her other times, noting that in an interview last year, she was asked if she recalled any further details of the conversation in the vehicle with Bush before the assault.
‘Chatted up’
Lynch said, during that interview, she had told police that Bush had called her pretty and attractive. She agreed with Lynch that she was being “chatted up” in the car.
He asked if she agreed that, according to what she had told police, up until they pulled off the road into a dark lane off West Bay Road, that he had been “entirely respectful” to her.
“I would say he wasn’t disrespectful,” she replied, but added, “For a man of his stature, I would venture to say those remarks, in that capacity, were disrespectful.”
Pressing her on this point, Lynch asked if she meant in his “capacity” as a Member of Parliament; she responded, “I thought it was disrespectful because he’s a married man.”
She added that she had understood the police officers’ question about disrespect and untoward behaviour to mean they were asking if he had been acting aggressively towards her, which, she said, he had not.
The court had heard in the police interview that the woman said she had pulled the vehicle into a dark marl road, surrounded by mangrove-type bushes, after Bush had asked her to, and she assumed he needed to urinate. She agreed with Lynch that the engine was still running and she had her seat belt on when Bush got out of the vehicle after kissing and touching her.
Asked why she didn’t just drive off at that point, she said, “In that situation, I was scared. I was down a dark road with a very large-size person. I was very scared and intimidated and I just sat there and didn’t do anything.”
“You could have said stop, couldn’t you?” Lynch said, and she burst into tears, leading the court to take a short break so she could compose herself.
He later asked why she had not resisted in some way, like putting her hands up. She said she had tried to pull away, but he pointed out she had never told police this in any of her interviews.
The woman responded that she could not recall exactly what she had done, but she said, “I know what happened to me. I know he was kissing and sucking and slobbering on me with his fat mouth all over me, and you’re not going to tell me it didn’t happen.”
Political ambitions
Lynch also questioned the woman about her ambitions to become a political representative, asking her about a meeting she’d had with Progressives leader Roy McTaggart. She confirmed she’d asked McTaggart about the possibility of running as a Progressives candidate in a district where the party may not already have a candidate, and added that she had also spoken to others about running for office as well.
The defence lawyer also raised queries about the woman claiming to be a former member of a bar association in a US state, where she had lived at one time. She acknowledged that she had been a “student member”‘ of the association, but Lynch said this was not the same as being a member, and stated that the association had no record of her. She offered to show the court proof that she had been a student member.
The defence contends that Bush was not at the Sea Inn Bar that night, sometime in 2000, and that he would not have been socialising there with members of a rival political party, and, therefore, was not in the car with her and did not rape her.
Friend’s evidence
The woman has given several names of people to police, whom she says she had told of the rape.
One of those people, a friend from when the woman lived in the United States, gave evidence via Zoom late on Tuesday afternoon, when she confirmed to prosecution counsel Eloise Marshall, KC, that the complainant had told her about 12 years ago that she had been raped by an “important man” in the Cayman Islands when she was younger.
The complainant had messaged the friend last month to ask if police could contact her about being told the woman was “raped by a politician on my island”.
Lynch asked if the complainant had given any other details about the incident at the time she first told her of the assault, or had mentioned that the assailant was a politician. The friend answered that she had not.
The case continues.
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