Two women raped as teenagers during a trip to Central America seek compensation from their former school

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Two women raped as teenagers during a trip to Central America seek compensation from their former school

March 1st, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

The pair were just 15 and 16 when they claim a man raped both of them in their jungle cabin

By
Anthony Bond

Last updated at 8:00 PM on 29th February 2012

Awful: The girls were just 15 and 16 when a man raped both of them in their jungle cabin in Belize, pictured, while their minders slept a few yards away

‘You can’t suspect every man of being a
rapist’, a teacher said today as she defended herself against
negligence claims by two girls savagely attacked during a school trip to
Belize.

The teacher said she was just a few
metres away from the cabin where the girls, then aged 15 and 16, were raped during the 2005
adventure trip, but slumbered on and heard heard nothing of the
incident.

‘Had the girls shouted, there would
have been no problem. We were always running around, keeping an eye’,
she told London’s High Court.

The teacher and two adult ‘leaders’
were within easy hearing distance, and she told the court: ‘We are
talking 15 metres apart. Noise travels incredibly well and, had anything
been amiss, the leaders would have been up and running, as would I’.

Asked by the girls’ counsel,
Elizabeth-Anne Gumbel QC, why the girls’ cabin was not locked at night,
the teacher replied: ‘I could not go around like a total sergeant major
and lock them in. The last thing I was going to do was prevent them from
getting a quick exit’.

Describing her shock the morning after
the rapes, the teacher said she did not understand why the girls
believed she was doubting their account of their ordeal.

‘There were differences in what they
were saying that were quite large. It was important to ask quite firmly,
‘hey, what happened?’,’ she told the court.

When she described the horror of
seeing the girls’ bloody underwear after the attack, Mr Justice Mackay
intervened: ‘These girls were raped, there’s no doubt about it, and
there was blood all over the place’.

Asked if she accepted the girls’ account of what happened to them, the teacher replied: ‘We always have done’.

Miss Gumbel asked the teacher if she
had noticed anything odd about the attacker, who was the son of the
resort owner, and questioned why he was allowed to sleep so close to the
girls and escort them to their cabin by torchlight at night.

The teacher said there had been no
reason to have doubts about the attacker, who had been charming and
friendly, and told the court: ‘You can’t suspect every man of being a
rapist’.

Observing that Criminal Record Bureau
checks are not available in Belize, the teacher said that, even had such
checks been run, they would not have showed up anything against the
man.

When Miss Gumbel put to her: ‘This was
in reality an entirely unchecked man’, the teacher responded: ‘We
checked him as much as we could’.

The pair, now both in their 20s, are claiming massive damages from their former school, in the Medway area of Kent.

They say not enough was done to protect them by teachers and ex-military minders who were there to look after their security.

However, the school and the tour’s organisers, Adventure Lifesigns Ltd, are fighting the case and deny any liability to compensate the girls.

They say they can’t be held responsible for a rapist’s crimes and are accusing the girls of inviting their attacker, the resort owner’s son, into their farm cabin for a forbidden drinking session late at night.

One of the girls – given the pseudonym Mary in court – told the court how her attacker plied her with rum and ‘flirted’ with her and her friends while dancing at a bar in the local town.

She told Mr Justice Mackay, the burly man was ‘very friendly’ and ‘danced with us in a group’, bringing two rum-and-Cokes over to the schoolgirls’ tables and ‘asking us not to tell anyone’.

‘He was very flirtatious. He was asking
the girls about their boyfriends, but everybody trusted him so there was
no real reason for concern at that point’, she added.

Compensation: Two women who were raped during a trip to Central America when they were teenagers are suing their former school for damages at the High Court, pictured

Mary and her friends were staying at the isolated farm, owned by the man’s father, while on the trip following GCSEs which was designed to teach qualities of self-reliance and independence.

The girls were being watched over by a team of adult ‘leaders’, many of them ex-soldiers, but were working for their keep by carrying out tasks such as chopping down the thick undergrowth around the farm with machetes.

After the bar session, Mary explained how the man drove the group of girls back to the farm, but later strayed into the cabin she shared with four other teenagers.

There were a series of nocturnal ‘visits’ from the man, said Mary, including one in which he gave the girls a bottle of rum, although she did not think she was ‘drunk’.

Asking her about the alleged rape, the school’s barrister, John Norman, put to her: ‘Did you cry out for help?’

The adult leaders would have been too far away to hear her screams, said the girl, particularly because of the nocturnal din of the jungle.

‘In that situation, when someone so big is overpowering you, you don’t know what to do,’ she added. ‘You’re just afraid for your life.’

After the attack she and the other victim were both ‘shouting and crying’, she claimed, but no one came to their aid.

‘My friend was shouting and I was crying on the balcony and being physically sick, and nobody heard or came,’ she said.

Claims: The women, who cannot be identified, say not enough was done to protect them by teachers and ex-military minders who were there to look after their security

When the girls told the group leaders
the man had raped them, they asked if they were ‘sure’ he was the
attacker, said Mary, adding that she felt ‘disbelieved’ by one of the
teachers.

‘She said “you know that if you go to the police you’re going to have to go home – this is over for you'”, Mary told the court.

Mr
Norman told the court the girls’ cabin was fitted with locks and there
were three adults sleeping in the open just 15 metres away and ‘well
within ear shot’.

He
added: ‘During the night, after the adults had gone to sleep, the man
entered the girls cabana. This appears to have been by invitation or
consent.

‘For a period of time thereafter, the girls and the man engaged in drinking alcohol, which all knew was forbidden, and played games involving flirtatious behaviour.

‘The five girls collectively concealed both the man’s presence and their behaviour, keeping as quiet as possible while playing. At some point during the night he left – but at all times the adults had not been awoken.’

The barrister said the girls seemed ‘somewhat upset’ the following day and, over a period of about two hours, revealed that the man had raped them.

Local police were alerted and assistance was sent from the British High Commission.

The girls’ lawyers claim the teacher in charge of the trip ‘failed to make adequate checks’ on the man before allowing him contact with her pupils and ‘should have recognised him as a potential threat to the party’.

But Mr Norman said there was nothing about the man that should have put the teacher on alert.

Whilst accepting the school was duty-bound not to expose the girls to unreasonable risk of injury, the barrister said their attacker was not a ‘team leader’, nor was he ‘in charge’ of the group, and the school had ‘no control’ over his presence at the farm.

Mr Norman added: ‘The teacher was not aware that some or all of the five girls in the cabin were secretly meeting with this man, nor that none of them would raise any alarm when faced with threats or criminal conduct.’

The hearing continues.