Court to sentence man who sexually assaulted two sisters more than 25 years ago

A High Court in Bermuda has reserved until July 10, the sentencing of a 59-year-old man who was found guilty of committing several sexual offences against two sisters dating back to more than 25 years.

Puisne Judge Juan Wolffe has ordered that  John Dexter Seaman be remanded into custody after he was found guilty by a jury on Tuesday night after several hours of deliberations.

Seaman was found guilty of eight offences including two counts of unlawful carnal knowledge, two counts of attempted unlawful carnal knowledge and four counts of sexual exploitation.

The offences were alleged to have taken place between 1992 and 1997.

The court heard from one of the sisters that she met Seaman when she was about 11 years old and he was about 30. She recalled an incident in which he sexually touched her in his van and attempted to have sex with her after taking her to the cinema.

She told the court that the offences against her continued for years, while the other sister spoke of  several incidents, with the first taking place as she was getting ready to go to school when she was seven or eight years old.

Neither defendant made a police complaint about the incident until 2018.

Senior Crown counsel, Nicole Smith, dismissed the position of the defence attorney, Charles Richardson, that the older of the two sisters admitted that she had made false allegations of sexual assault in the past.

Smith said the victims had no reason to fabricate stories of past abuse, describing the accused as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” who took advantage of the girls’ absentee parents to “use them as he liked”.

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