Jeffrey Barnes faces further sex allegations

Rapist Jeffrey Barnes appeared in court yesterday to face further rape and abduction charges, but was remanded back into custody pending a Grand Court appearance next week on three previous charges and the two new counts.

In a brief Tuesday appearance before Magistrate Nova Hall, Barnes, wearing a neat polo shirt and blue jeans, faced fresh charges in connection with a 29 October abduction and rape of a 49-year-old woman in Admiral’s Landing. He left wearing sunglasses.

The Tuesday allegations come in addition to a single 4 November count of sexual assault on a 17-year-old, and 22 November charges of aggravated burglary and rape.

The sexual assault charge relates to an attack that came only 48 hours prior to the Admiral’s Landing incident.

The 22 November charges stem from a 20 October attack in George Town’s Whitman Seymour Drive, reported to police by the victim in a telephone call from overseas after detectives announced on 31 October they were seeking Barnes for the two-day-earlier attack.

Barnes has already served a one-year sentence for raping a 16-year-old.

Appearing yesterday for the defence, Samson and McGrath’s Prathna Bodden told the court she had been unable to obtain background papers on Barnes, notwithstanding “this new matter”. Both Crown Counsel Nicole Petite and Magistrate Hall agreed to postpone the arraignment until 16 December, at which time Barnes will appear in Grand Court.

Barnes has been in custody since his 1 November arrest after a brief manhunt culminating at Prospect’s Ocean Club where he had been hiding since the Admiral’s Landing assault.

During his 2009 Northward incarceration, the 32-year-old Barnes appeared in a Government Information Service’s “Spotlight” show, proclaiming how a literacy programme had changed his life.

“After you start reading you gain more knowledge,” Barnes told interviewer Heather Hopson. “You gain more understanding, and you start to find yourself doing more positive things and think more positive toward your life, what you are going to do with your life when you come out, you know?

“You ask for help because really and truly mostly everybody in here can help. Also if someone can show that passion that they are willing to help, take that passion and go forward from there.”

Barnes is also suspected of three times seeking to lure an 11-year-old into his car in Prospect only hours prior to the Admiral’s Landing attack. No charges have been brought in the incident, however.