A 43-year-old local gardener, Selwyn Baxter, has been sentenced to 16 years behind bars at the Kingstown High Court for the violent sexual assault of a vulnerable 15-year-old secondary school student, who fled her home after receiving a suspension notice out of fear of disappointing her grandparents. A nine-member jury previously found Baxter guilty of the rape charge, while clearing him of a separate abduction count.
Presiding Justice Rickie Burnett laid out the full sequence of traumatic events during the May 2024 sentencing hearing, tracing the victim’s ordeal back to May 9, 2023: after collecting her official school suspension letter, the terrified teen avoided the direct route home, boarding a public van heading in the opposite direction before wandering to a local beach where she sat sobbing, overwhelmed by uncertainty over how to break the news to her guardians. As dusk fell, she sought shelter in the yard of a nearby health facility, hoping to find a staff member to confide in, but found the premises completely empty. Exhausted, cold, and with no way to contact her family, she curled up on a chair in a lit corner of the property and eventually fell asleep, her phone battery dropping to just 1% by the time she woke briefly to dial 911 before drifting off again.
Back at home, the girl’s grandmother grew frantic when her grandson returned from school alone, with no sign of the missing teenager. The pair immediately launched a search along local roads and around the school grounds, before filing an official missing person report with local law enforcement.
In the early hours after midnight, the teen was jolted awake by a hand on her shoulder, where Baxter— a local man with no prior record of sexual offences— approached her, offering food, shelter, and reassurance that he would not harm her. Trusting his seemingly kind overtures, the exhausted teen followed him back to his unfurnished home, where he served her tea and a meal she could not bring herself to eat. When she attempted to flee after noticing the front door had been locked, Baxter sexually assaulted her, raping her before retreating to his porch.
The traumatized teen managed to leave the property shortly after, flagging down a passing police patrol car to report the attack. Officers immediately transported her to a local clinic for a medical examination, launched a full crime scene investigation, and took Baxter into custody.
During sentencing, Justice Burnett referenced the teen’s powerful victim impact statement, in which she described the night of the assault as the worst of her life, recounting lingering feelings of hopelessness, self-disgust, persistent anxiety over potential sexually transmitted infections, and long-term disruption to her daily mood and mental wellbeing. A social inquiry report submitted to the court painted Baxter as a previously peaceful, law-abiding community member with no children, whose family and neighbours expressed total shock at his conviction, as he had never before been linked to any violent or sexual misconduct. Even after the jury’s unanimous guilty verdict, Baxter continued to assert his full innocence.
In calculating the final sentence, Justice Burnett noted that the maximum possible penalty for the offence was life imprisonment, with a notional 30-year starting point for sentencing calculations. He first set a baseline 15-year term, representing 50% of that maximum, before adding three years to account for aggravating factors including the offence taking place at night, the significant 28-year age gap between Baxter and his minor victim, the severe breach of trust, the profound psychological harm and degradation inflicted on the teenager, and broader public data showing rising prevalence of similar sexual offences in the region. The judge then deducted two years to account for Baxter’s previously unblemished good character, before subtracting the 1 year, 5 months and 13 days he had already spent in pre-sentencing remand, resulting in a final active prison term of 14 years, 6 months and 17 days. Baxter was additionally ordered to complete a mandatory four-year court-mandated counselling programme as part of his sentence. When Baxter attempted to interrupt proceedings to make a statement after the sentence was read, Justice Burnett informed him that his judicial duties in the case were complete, and advised Baxter to submit any appeals directly to the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal.
Man jailed for raping teen who was afraid to go home
