Valencia ”mudman” convicted of repeatedly abusing a 15-year-old boy

Derek Achong

A gyp­sum "mud­man" from Va­len­cia has been con­vict­ed of re­peat­ed­ly bug­ger­ing a 15-year-old boy, whom he took in af­ter the boy ran away from home over a decade ago.

It took a nine-mem­ber ju­ry be­fore Jus­tice Nali­ni Singh al­most an hour to con­sid­er the ev­i­dence against Nigel Gor­don Phillip and to find him guilty at the end of his tri­al at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port of Spain, last Fri­day.

Phillip was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody and will re­main in prison un­til Jus­tice Singh sen­tences him on Ju­ly 17.

The state ac­cused Phillip of abus­ing the teenag­er in March 2015.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Dy­lan Mar­tin, the teen from Laven­tille left home af­ter hav­ing an ar­gu­ment with his grand­moth­er, whom he lived with.

He went to a fast-food restau­rant in down­town Port of Spain where he met sev­er­al friends.

Af­ter his friends left, the teen re­port­ed­ly had a con­ver­sa­tion with Phillip, who was then 37 years old and a cus­tomer in the restau­rant.

Phillip al­leged­ly in­vit­ed the teen to his home af­ter hear­ing that he ran away and had nowhere to go. His grand­moth­er re­port­ed him miss­ing lat­er that evening.

When they ar­rived at Phillip's home, he di­rect­ed the teen to lie down on the couch.

The teenag­er claimed that Phillip re­peat­ed­ly told him he liked him, but he told Phillip that he had a girl­friend and was "not on that kind of thing".

He claimed that af­ter re­sist­ing Phillip's ad­vances for sev­er­al min­utes, Phillip over­pow­ered and bug­gered him.

The skilled labour­er al­leged­ly kept the teen at his house for al­most two months and bug­gered him sev­er­al times. The teen al­so claimed that Phillip or­dered him to clean the house and wash his clothes.

The teenag­er even­tu­al­ly man­aged to leave the house and made a re­port to the po­lice, which led to of­fi­cers charg­ing Phillip.

The court gave Phillip the op­tion to tes­ti­fy in his de­fence dur­ing the tri­al and di­rect­ly chal­lenge the teen's al­le­ga­tions, but he de­clined to do so.

Josi­ah Soo Hon and Khi Cam­bridge al­so rep­re­sent­ed the DPP's Of­fice.