The High Court has ordered the State to pay Nadia Pooran more than $2.5\u202fmillion after finding that a female prison officer repeatedly sexually abused her while she was incarcerated in the Women\u2019s Prison in Arouca. Judge Robin Mohammed ruled that Pooran\u2019s constitutional rights to humane treatment and equality were violated.<\/p>\n
Pooran, who was serving a 12\u2011year sentence for the 2003 murder of teacher Ralphy Ramcharan, described a pattern of abuse that included forced oral sex, phone recordings, and visits from the officer while she was in solitary confinement. She said the officer also tried to force her to model lingerie for photographs. The officer denied all accusations and did not attend the court hearing.<\/p>\n
The judge accepted Pooran\u2019s evidence as uncontradicted and found that the State failed to protect her from cruel and unusual punishment. He awarded $2\u202fmillion in general damages\u2014$450 per day for her incarceration\u2014and an additional $450\u202f000 in vindicatory damages, bringing the total to $2.45\u202fmillion.<\/p>\n
After her release, Pooran fled to the United Kingdom, where she is seeking asylum. She earned a First Class Honours BA in Sociology from the University of Bradford and is pursuing an MA in Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester. The case underscores that a prison sentence does not remove a person\u2019s constitutional right to protection from abuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
High Court Orders State to Pay $2.5 Million to Woman Who Reported Sexual Abuse by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-trinidad-and-tobago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}