Victim gives up allegedly violent rape case

Ephraim Hendy

A Belize City woman was brutally raped and stabbed inside her home in August 2009, allegedly by Ephraim Hendy, a man she knew well. The twenty-eight year old victim barely survived the incident and had no doubts about the identity of the person who attacked her, but today she chose not to testify against him. That’s because the case came up in court almost three years after the incident and she simply could not relive that nightmare in court. A representative from the D.P.P.’s Office, Meagan Francis, informed Justice Adolph Lucas that the complainant had indicated on March ninth that she did not want to testify and on Tuesday of this week, she gave a statement to police, requesting that no further action be taken against Hendy. With that, the charges of Rape and Use of Deadly Means of Harm with Intent to Cause Grievous Harm were withdrawn and Hendy left the court a free man. The victim had initially reported that on August thirty-first, 2009 she got into an argument with Hendy at her house. It was around three o’clock in the morning when things got out of hand; she says he took a knife from her kitchen and started choking her. He was accused of raping her and then stabbing her in the abdomen before leaving.