The Nassau Guardian
Birbal convicted of sex crime
A former public school teacher has been convicted of the sexual abuse of a student for the second time.
A nine-member jury unanimously convicted Andre Birbal, 51, of unnatural sex with a male student while he was in the seventh and ninth grades.
The jury on direction of Justice Roy Jones acquitted Birbal of four additional charges.
Birbal showed no emotion as the jury forewoman read the verdict.
Birbal, who has been in custody since his extradition from New York in 2010, returns to court on May 9 for sentencing before Justice Jones.
According to the virtual complainant, whose identity cannot be revealed, Birbal began molesting him in the seventh grade when he was 11.
He said the abuse continued up to his graduation in 2007.
The man, who is now 24, claimed that Birbal had anal and oral sex with him in a classroom after school and at his home.
The former student said the first sexual encounter took place in the art class when Birbal told him to stay back.
He said Birbal photographed his mouth and told him that he could help him fix his teeth, which were “very bad”.
Shortly afterwards, Birbal undressed the student and performed oral sex with him before having anal sex with him, according to the complainant.
Birbal did not testify in his defense. Instead, he called the prison physician, Dr. Hastings Johnson, who testified that Birbal was HIV-negative on his admission to Her Majesty’s Prison in March 2010.
Birbal’s lawyer Romona Farquharson-Seymour said her client’s HIV status questioned the complainant’s credibility as he had claimed that he had contracted HIV and Birbal was his only sexual partner.
However, Darell Taylor, the prosecutor, dismissed the issue as a “smokescreen”
She told jurors not to be blinded but to focus on the issue at hand: whether they believed Birbal had molested his student.
The Court of Appeal in 2012 overturned Birbal’s 2011 conviction due to errors made by the trial judge during his summation.
A second trial was stopped last year after it was discovered that certain jurors did not appear on the initial jury list.
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