Businessman convicted of rape

A Belize City businessman has been convicted of rape. Forty-eight year old Dennis Gabourel was found guilty on a single count of rape plus a charge of aggravated assault by a jury on Friday evening following three hours of deliberations. The charges arose out of events occurring on September nineteenth 2003, when Gabourel’s ex-common-law wife alleged that Gabourel took her to the hangar area of Belize City and forced her to have sex with him. The aggravated assault conviction was tied to a sexual molestation of the rape victim’s daughter which occurred nine days earlier. Gabourel will be sentenced on October twenty-eighth.