A Jamaican national, was sentenced to 35 years in jail for committing various explicit sexual acts on two young sisters.
Locksley Jeffery Cummings, likened to a “monster” by Puisne Judge Shade Subair-Williams was ordered to spend at least 17½ years before becoming eligible for parole.
The 43-year-old had in February been found guilty of five charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, after pleading not guilty. The man had offended in 2007 and continued to commit similar acts through to 2009.
Cummings what sentence to 18 years on three counts against one victim and 17 years on two counts against the sister.
The sentences were ordered to run consecutively.
Before sentencing, Mrs Justice Subair-Williams said Cummings’s crimes were one of the worst non-death cases she had ever seen in Bermuda, and that he had put his victims through “a nightmare”.
Addressing Cummings, she said: ”You violated that little girl like only a monster could.
“To think that any person could be so vile and cruel. May you one day step away from your cowardly denial of these heinous crimes and address your demons. You will have to ask yourself the question, ‘Can I ever forgive myself?’”
• Victim: ‘I felt abandoned by everyone’
One of Locksley Cummings’s victims spoke of her feelings of anger and betrayal during her five-year ordeal.
In a victim impact statement, the teenager, who was 7 when the abuse began, also revealed that she considered death by suicide as a result of the physical and emotional trauma she endured.
The statement read in part: “Betrayal is an understandably large understatement to what I had felt the first time he had sexual intercourse with me at the ripe age of 7.
“Of course, I was mature for my age, I didn’t cry a lot, I was pretty strong and thought pretty logically about things, so I knew right from wrong and I knew what he was doing was wrong.
“Regardless of the fact I had these traits from a young age, it doesn’t dismiss that I was still only a seven-year-old girl. I was pretty good at hiding what went on behind closed doors. I excelled at school, I was always smiling, did good in sports, etc.
“But when I was alone was when I felt the most sadness. When it was just me, the darkness and my thoughts was when anger, rage, frustration built up.
“During the times that he would be doing sexual things to me, it would hurt so much I would cry. I would wish everyone disappeared. I would even wish that I had disappeared, but after he would finish, I would go back to normal.
“From 7 to late 12, this would be continuing to the fact that I turned off my emotions and never felt anything about what he was doing to me, but turn my emotions towards something else.
“I would scream, throw things, rip paper everything you could imagine, even threaten to kill myself and cut myself in front of my stepmom. I always wondered, ‘have I not made it obvious enough? Is everyone so oblivious?’
“I felt so alone. I felt abandoned by everyone, even when I had a lot of people who surrounded me. I felt I only had myself and myself was all I needed sometimes.
“Now at 13 going 14, this has impacted me not so greatly. I have dismissed this part of my life and rebirthed a new me that only looks towards the future and not look back at the past. I will never forget what he did to me; however, I will not let it affect me, either. I simply move on and leave what happened in the past.
“My emotions to things nowadays is a pretty nonchalant take, mostly because I just decided that’s the best way I had coped in the past and that’s the best way I cope now.
“Sometimes I can’t really understand what I’m feeling, but I still never talk about it. What happened to me simply made me aware of things that can be happening at other people’s home life. And now I’m in a better place.”
At the end of the trial prosecutors had recommended Cummings be put away for 37 years and got very close to their ask.
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