A high-profile child sexual abuse case against a 47-year-old Arima mechanic has ended in a full acquittal after critical gaps in police investigative work and damaging admissions from the accuser undermined the prosecution’s entire argument, leading the jury to reject all charges in less than an hour of deliberations.
The defendant, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his accuser — his then-minor stepdaughter — had maintained his complete innocence from the moment he was arrested and charged in April 2022. He faced two separate charges under Trinidad and Tobago’s Children Act, alleging he incited his stepdaughter, who was under 16 at the time, to engage in sexual activity at a remote spring along Blanchisseuse Road on December 21, 2021, and sexually touched her at his home the following day. He entered a not guilty plea immediately after being charged, and his trial got underway one week before the acquittal before High Court Justice Nalini Singh.
Prosecutors from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions called multiple witnesses to build their case, including the accuser, her mother, lead investigating officer PC Kirk Vasquez, a police photographer, a supervising sergeant, and the owner of the vehicle prosecutors claimed was used to transport the girl to the alleged first crime scene. But as the defense team, led by attorneys Russell Orlando Warner and Kashif Gibson, began cross-examining witnesses, major, irreversible flaws in the state’s investigation came to light.
Under questioning, PC Vasquez conceded a long list of investigative failures that destroyed the credibility of the case. He acknowledged he never traveled to the Blanchisseuse Road spring that was the site of the first allegation, never arranged for any photographic documentation of the location, and could not even confirm basic details about whether the area was secluded, as the accuser’s account claimed. For the second alleged incident, which prosecutors said took place on an outdoor couch at the defendant’s home, Vasquez admitted he never interviewed nearby neighbors, never spoke to people living in the upper floor of the defendant’s house, and never interviewed the accuser’s brother — who was reportedly in the same room when the abuse was alleged to have occurred. Most notably, the lead investigator also confirmed no DNA evidence was ever collected or tested to support the accuser’s claims.
The accuser herself made equally damaging admissions during cross-examination that revealed a clear motive for her to fabricate the allegations. She confirmed she had stolen approximately $19,500 from the defendant, breaking a prior promise she had made to him, and that he had threatened to report the theft to police. She told the court that fear of that police report “operated in her mind” when she went to the station to file her sexual abuse claims. She further admitted the defendant had seized her tablet computer, and she feared he would find inappropriate private online messages she had sent and share that information with her mother — a concern she also acknowledged influenced her decision to file the allegations.
The defense emphasized that these confirmed motives, paired with the deep failures of the police investigation, made the accuser’s claims completely unreliable. Additional evidence also worked in the defendant’s favor: the court heard he had no prior criminal arrests, charges, or convictions, and both the accuser and her mother confirmed he had long acted as a caring father figure who treated the girl as his own biological child.
After closing arguments concluded, the nine-member jury began deliberations and reached a verdict in just 40 minutes, returning not guilty verdicts on both charges against the defendant.