Doc has another sex case before courts.
Ocho Rios-based medical doctor, Sheldon Minott, who has been charged for procuring abortion on a 15-year-old girl, spent three days in police custody last week before being offered bail Friday.
He was arrested Wednesday, held in custody and appeared in court Thursday but was denied bail and returned Friday when he was offered bail.
The case has attracted huge attention and on Friday when it was called up, the court room was cleared, as happens in sex cases.
Dr Minott has another sex case in court. He is also before the same court on a charge of rape.
RAPE CASE
Dr. Minott was arrested on June 18 after the complainant (who is a member of his staff) filed a report that she was assaulted on her first day on the job at the doctor’s office in January. Police from the Centre of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) investigated the complaint and Dr Minott was arrested in Ocho Rios. He was charged with grievous sexual assault and attempted rape. Minott was given station bail in the sum of three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000). That case is ongoing in the St. Ann’s Bay Resident Magistrate court.
Minott is now charged with procuring abortion and grievous bodily harm with intent.
He was granted bail when he appeared in the St. Ann’s Bay Resident Magistrate Court on Friday, October 2.
Dr Minott was offered bail in the sum of one million dollars with one or two sureties. He is to hand over his travel documents and report every day at the Ocho Rios police station between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. The doctor was told he should make no contact with the complainant or witnesses. Additionally he should also refrain from examining children without their parent’s supervision.
Minott who is represented by Robert Brown is to return to court on December 14 when his case will be mentioned.
The Times was the first media house to carry the story after a 15-year-old school girl was rushed to St Ann’s Bay Hospital in a critical condition on Thursday, September 10.
Reports are that she had collapsed at home after taking pills to carry out an abortion on a five-month old fetus. From the St Ann’s Bay Hospital, she was taken by helicopter to Kingston Public Hospital where she was in a coma.
Earlier the girl, who lives in St Ann, was reportedly accompanied by a friend to a doctor’s office in Ocho Rios and sought an abortion.
MOM DIDN’T KNOW
Police were informed by hospital staff and CISOCA commenced investigations after she was admitted at St Ann’s Bay. Police found the fetus in bushes where the girl had dumped it. They deny reports that it had been inadvertently discovered by the child’s mother.
Police told The Times that up to last week they had not got a report from the girl’s parents. An officer said the girl’s mother did not know she was pregnant.
Police Superintendent Wayne Cameron told the North Coast Times that police would be seeking to find out what the mother knew. He said he also had an interest in a male who impregnated the girl as she is under sixteen years old, which is the age of consent.
Mr Cameron said the police had detailed statements from the complainant as well as from witnesses and investigations were continuing.
