The girl told the court that she made up the story

A Belize City man was today acquitted of a charge of aggravated assault of an indecent nature upon his 15-year-old daughter, when the minor admitted, as the trial progressed in the Chief Magistrate’s courtroom, that she had fabricated the story about her 40-year-old father.

The girl, who is now 16, recanted her story, telling the court that she had made it up, after her father had threatened to beat her for losing money that her mother had sent her to buy with.

The trial began this afternoon before Chief Magistrate Ann Marie Smith, but after the prosecutor, Inspector of Police Carol Tucker, called the girl as her first witness, she took the witness stand but refused to give evidence.

Tucker moved an application for the girl to be treated as a hostile prosecution witness, and Chief Magistrate Smith accepted the application, declaring the girl a hostile witness.

Prosecutor Tucker then delved into the girl’s March 17, 2013 statement, in which she told police that whilst she was sleeping in her bed, her father came into her room and began to fondle her breast and then touched her on her private area.

But after that statement was presented to her, the girl told the court that that statement she made was a complete lie, and that she made it up because her father had threatened to beat her.

Earlier on the day of the alleged incident, her father had given her some money to make a purchase for her mother.

When her mother later sent her to buy at the grocery store, she returned, saying that she had lost the money. She made up the story against her father that he molested her after he threatened to beat her for losing the money, the girl told the court.