Neighbors living in fear after helping previous rape victims
By Shervin Belgrave
An alleged serial abuser, Thurston Semple, is currently in police custody.
Kaieteur News – For many years, the neighbors of the alleged serial rapist, 37-year-old Thurston Semple, have been living in fear after helping some of his previous victims.
Last Wednesday, however, they were forced to put those fears aside and lend a helping hand to a Venezuelan sex worker.
The woman is alleged to have been raped, sodomized and beaten by Semple. His neighbors had witnessed her plummeting through the window of Semple’s louvres in an attempt to escape. They even looked forward in horror as he crucified her in his yard, before they could help him scale his fence.
Semple, a resident of Lot 5A, Tucville Terrace, is currently in custody while police are investigating the matter.
In an attempt, by this newspaper, to find out more about the suspects, one phrase – ‘this is not the first time he has done this’ – has been echoed repeatedly by neighbors.
When asked why they had not reported their observations to the police, residents were told, “we helped a few times in the past, but our actions caused us to live in fear.”
A female neighbor recalled, nearly 15 years ago, that he had run out of his yard and licked her head, causing her to collapse.
His brother, who was living with him at the time, had also joined in dragging him out of the yard and assaulting her for facing him for a victim.
“His mother was there as well. I had reported the matter, was caught a few days and released … I never got justice for that attack, “said the neighbor.
“Since then,” he said, “we’ve been scared of him and didn’t want to mix in his personal life.”
Others remembered him chasing a woman out of his house and beating her in the street.
They said she was also rescued, but was held for a few days and then released.
A man said Semple had been locked up for rape before but after some months had passed he returned to the neighborhood.
“A man like that is a dangerous situation if you report him and he comes back to live among you, he can take revenge by harming us or our children,” he said.
Another person said he would come out in his yard and “curse, threatening to kill and rape and sodomize people for their mouth.”
Semple, residents said, even threatened to burn their homes for rescuing the Venezuelan sex worker, who was attacked last Wednesday. She had, this announcement reported, had to punch her way through a louvres window and jump a fence to escape Semple.
A resident explained that he had been arrested on the night of that attack but subsequently released.
When he returned, that person indicated that he had started cursing. He had said, they reported, “‘all yuh wah talk, talk and bring me down, house gon bun down.”
Semple was re-arrested by police on Monday and has been in custody ever since.
Neighbors hope that this time he will be convicted and locked behind bars for a very long time.
Kaieteur News had learned that Semple had been accused over years of not only the cruelty of sex workers, but that he would also attract minors, both girls and boys, to his home to have sex with them.
In some cases, he would beat his victims, take off their clothes, chase them out of his home, and close the door. These events, neighbors said, would happen in the evenings.
Semple is also accused of raping and beating a female relative, who has since died.