Rape suspect on lam; dad speaks in his defence
He is being sought by police in connection with the sexual assault of three teenaged tourists, but even while the suspect remains on the lam, his family is speaking out with their version of a story–that if you saw it on a T.V. soap opera–you’d say it was over the top.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Tonight Belizean law enforcement officials have issued a wanted person report for twenty-four year old Aaron Juan, a resident of San Ignacio, in connection with accusations of rape by three visiting British students.
Today, Nazim Juan, father of the accused, agreed to appear in an on camera interview to give his son?s version of the events that unfolded on the night of August first.
Nazim Juan, Father of Accused
?I really hated not only my son, but even the girls. But I hated the teachers more. I think that these guys were really, really not responsible for these young people.?
Juan told News Five that in late August, three representatives of an organisation called Life Signs, based in Britain, approached him and asked to conduct a one-week work experience programme at the Juan family farm in Georgeville. After checking out the place, both parties agreed to let fifteen female students do landscape work on the property in exchange for free lodging. According to Juan, after five days at work on the farm, the group decided to have a night on the town before heading back to England. They ended up here, at the Piache Hotel bar where Juan alleges everyone got pretty drunk.
Nazim Juan
?He said they order one beer, two beers, three beers, they all had about six or seven beers, the girls, all the students, he saw them coming back and forth. He say, but they were not worrying because well he had no control over them, it was the teachers and the leaders. So he said that they were drinking at the bar and he was taking a couple drinks himself along with them. And they together drank about fourteen or fifteen beers each, he and the professors and the teacher, all four of them were at the bar drinking.?
?He saw that at that point the girls came to the bar and he saw them drinking rum and coke and they wanted to try it, so they tried a little bit and they liked it. So they asked if they could get a rum and coke and the teacher said, ?Okay, only one.? He said they drank about eight or ten rum and cokes, each one of them.?
When the group finally got back to the farm around two in the morning, Juan says his son, who had taken up residence in the cabana furthest away from those housing the students, awoke to the sound of someone screaming his name. Juan claims he grabbed flashlights and a shotgun, thinking there was some sort of trouble. But when he got to this cabana, the younger Juan claims to have found the door wide open and its five female occupants half dressed, giggling, and playing ?Spin the Bottle?.
Nazim Juan
?He said, ?Hey girls, stop messing around,? but he was still half drunk. So he took the gun outside and was going towards his cabana back and the girls said, ?Come on Aaron, don?t be chicken, come in and play a game with us, it?s an English game.? And so he said, ?Come on mien, it?s late.??it?s like nearly between two and three o?clock the morning. They said, ?Come on Aaron, come over.? And so he said, ?Okay, I?ll play one game with you.? But he only saw three girls in brassiere and underwear; they had nothing else on. And so he was sitting on the floor playing spin the bottle with a bottle of Caribbean Rum and every time they spin the bottle they took a drink.
?So he said that he had his clothes on?he had no shirt, his pants on and he sit down and did the game with them, live three, four games and they start kissing him and it was a game. And he said all of a sudden he heard a girl screaming, ?Leave me alone, leave me alone, I?m a virgin. It?s hurting me.? And so he said that voice came right from the bed beside them, but because the cabana only has one candle light, you couldn?t see everybody in there. And so he jumped up quick and said, ?What?s happening here?? and the girl was screaming, ?Please help, please help; she?s touching me. I?m a virgin, its hurts.? He said so he and one of the girls stood up quick, pulled the sheet off the bed and the big girl was on top of the little girl; I don?t know what her name is or her age is. She was on top of her fingering the girl and sucking the girl?s breast. He said when he saw that he took pity on the girl as such and so he said, ?Come on, leave the girl alone.? And two of them?he and one of the girl tried to pull the big girl from on top of the little girl. He said when he leaned over to pull the girl, the girl pulled on him and the other three girls push him on top of the girls. He said at that point he didn?t have his shoes on or nothing, he only walked cross?he put on his pants and walked towards the place. He said he had a short pants on, these boxer things like. And so he said the girls jumped on him and start pulling his pants down and biting him all over. He had about four five bites on his back, he had bites on his right chest here. And they start jumping on him, and he said, ?Come on girls, stop playing.? And they all say, ?Come on, we told Andrew that we want to have sex with you.? They told the guy who went back home that was supposed to come back and get them that they were going to do that. And so they start messing around, messing around and he confessed to me that he did have sex with two of the girls, the two bigger girls. He said the little girl on the bed was crying because she was bleeding because the other girl had fingered her.?
?As a man, sixty years old, I?m a married guy, I have experience and the public might agree or might not agree with what I?m saying, but girls have certain?their body, the way they look, they have something in them that they can do to get a guy weak, any guy. It?ll take a real, real mature man or maybe a real, real religious person to back off from that situation. On my part?and guy out there can believe what I?m saying or they cannot believe it?I know for a fact that if I go into a room and I would have been young like him, there is no way any man out there would have or could have resist five naked girls jumping on him, biting him, kissing him, pulling off his trousers. It?s nearly impossible.?
?I hate that it happened, I hate it. I am still blaming my son for that. I hate it; he has sisters. But I have to say to you and to the country and to anybody listening to me that girls should learn to respect themselves so that they are not harassed by anybody. But this went extremely worse than that, it went beyond the point. Instead of the guy seeing a girl naked and he could have restrained, these girls actually jumped on him, he had two bites on his right chest here, and climbed on him and pulled his trousers down, throw him in bed and all these stuff. I personally feel that maybe, maybe one percent of all men could really restrain from having sex with girls when they exposed themselves under this condition.?
Tonight News Five understands that the ages of the girls involved in the incident ranged from sixteen to nineteen. In the sobering daylight of the following day, reports were filed with officials from the British High Commission and local police. On behalf of the students? families, the British High Commission requested an AIDS test from Aaron Juan, which he took. But according to his father, within hours heavily armed police officers showed up at the front door. Juan watched as his son headed out the back.
Nazim Juan
?When the police they came there, I think that myself would have runaway. The way the police act with people in this country, I don?t want them to beat up my son or harass him or kick him up and hurt him up. I didn?t want that to happen. And I didn?t want them to have a confrontation with my son either, with whatever, guns whatever it is. He?s a big guy and he will not let the police put hands on him if he knows that they?ll brutalise him. So I told him to restrain from any problems and to cooperate with what we should do to get things sorted out. He agreed with me, but when the police they came there and jumped out of the vehicles with big rifles and big guns, I had no control over him, he?s not my little son, he?s my big son. He?s like twenty-four years old, so I cannot dictate to him everything what to do, I can only advise him.?
The Juan family has retained attorney Hubert Elrington for legal counsel. They maintain that Aaron, presently hiding out somewhere in the jungles of the Cayo District, will soon turn himself in to authorities.
