?Daddy, don?t worry. I?m all right. As soon as the lawyer says I can come, I will turn myself in,? Juan said his son told him when they last spoke. ?I still think that if I was not drinking, I could have avoided what happened or if the girls were not completely naked and all five of them in one room? I could not fight back all five. He said he lost control of himself and he did have sex with two of them.?

We note that despite our attempts to get a police report on the alleged rape, both Police Commissioner, Gerald Westby, and Police press officer, G. Michael Reid, who have been quoted in the foreign press, have declined to give us an official report on the case.

Nazim Juan told us that the reports in the media are quite different from the report he got from his son of exactly what happened that night.

According to him, a group of 15 British teenaged girls and their chaperones, two males and a female, had been staying at his farm, Morning Star Farm, at Georgeville, off Mile 66 on the Western Highway, for four days and four nights.

?The British people were supposed to have been responsible for this ?working experience.? They actually begged me to allow them to come to my farm and do some work, since some other enterprises had turned them down? They wanted to do some planting or cleaning up around the caba?as,? he recounted.

All was well, he said, until the night before their departure from his farm, when the group went out partying.

?On Sunday, I sent a Ford van for them to use. They didn?t have any [driver?s] license so they asked if Aaron could drive them to [San Ignacio] town,? the father continued.

The group, he said, arrived in San Ignacio about 5:30 p.m. and went to a local restaurant where he met them. They ate and played pool there and later went to ?Piache,? where the group started drinking, he said.

Mr. Juan said that because he knew that the group had been drinking at the bar, he got one of his workers, Andrew Haylock, to drive them back to the farm, about 6? miles away, which he said happened between 1:30 and 2:00 that morning.

He said that Andrew asked to borrow the vehicle again, because 5 of the girls wanted him to take them back to San Ignacio, but he refused to lend him the vehicle again.

Meanwhile, said Juan, Aaron had gone to his caba?a.

What happened after the group of girls, Aaron and their chaperones returned to the farm is in dispute. According to international reports quoting Belize police officials, Aaron raped three of the girls.

Mr. Juan says, however, that Aaron has told him a different story. While Aaron admits to having sex with two of the girls, he says that more was happening in the caba?a between the girls than has been disclosed in the international reports. He further said that there were five girls in the caba?a, not three. A game of spin the bottle (with a bottle of Caribbean rum), between Aaron and three of the girls evidently led to other things.

?The following morning,? the father continues, ?I drove to the farm and found out that things were not looking right with Aaron and the group. I questioned him and he told me that they all got?the whole group and himself – completely drunk and that the leaders and himself had drunk more than 14 beers each [at Piache]?

?I asked him then if that was the only problem, about getting drunk and he confessed to me and told me that things got bad and that he messed around with the girls??

One of the chaperones for the group contacted the British High Commission, giving his report of what had happened on the farm. However, Juan claims that a lot of important details were left out.

Juan said that he questioned one of his workers, Mike Smith, but he claimed that he did not know what had happened. Then he again questioned his son.

Aaron, said Nazim Juan, has visible bite marks on his chest and back after his encounter with the girls. He claims that he has about 4 on his back and another 2 or 3 on his chest.

He said that when he got what he felt was the whole story, he approached the three chaperones and proposed that they should go to the doctor and to the police to get official reports.

?I told him [one of the chaperones, an ex-military], I wanted three girls or the five girls to identify themselves and I wanted to accompany them and my son to the police station and then to the doctor?? he said. ?He completely refused to accept my offer and told me that they will handle it their own way, with the British High Commission and their headquarters in England.?

He said that the group loaded up their luggage and he took them to Mr. Enrique de Paz Hotel, right in front of the Sacred Heart Church in San Ignacio, where an official from the British High Commission met them.

?I don?t know what they spoke, and just when I was about to drive off, they asked me if I can ask Aaron to cooperate and go for an AIDS test,? the father informed.

The son took the HIV test and returned home.

?While he was upstairs and I was downstairs, the police vehicle came with about 8 or 9 police, all with guns,? he said. It was at this point that his son first fled, said Juan, but returned to meet with Elrington.

Later that week, the father picked up the sealed results of the HIV test, which he gave to a male chaperone, asking him to take it to the British High Commission.

He opened it [in front of me] and he walked towards the other two [chaperones]. The lady [chaperone] came back to me while they were leaving and told me don?t worry? Thank God, the certificate says it?s negative. That?s a great help for the family and for us,? Juan commented.

He said that despite what happened on the farm, there were those from the group who had comforting words for him.

?The girls all waved goodbye,? he continued, ?One of the girls at the farm that he [Aaron] messed with, even though [a male chaperone] was stopping her, she rushed to me and hugged me?? The girl did not think that Aaron alone was to be blamed for what had happened, he said.

When we asked Juan if he knows where his son is, he replied, ?I don?t know if he left the country. Some neighbors say he left to Guatemala. He was in Trekforce [a British expedition program]. He knows the jungle well.?

He told us that while international media reports have quoted G. Michael Reid as saying that local police are doing much to solve the case, they have not taken a statement from him, even though he has visited the San Ignacio police station repeatedly since the incident happened, nor have they visited his premises since Monday, August 1, when the armed police went to pick up his son.

The father concluded by saying that his son had been a licensed tour guide for the past 7 years and has worked with thousands of local and foreign tourists, and he has never received complaints about him before last Monday.

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