PETER ORLANDO AGARD is today a man of history.
He has the dubious distinction of becoming the first person to be convicted in Barbados for having sexual intercourse with a corpse.
Agard was yesterday found guilty in two hours of the Common Law offence.
There is no prescribed penalty, so sentencing is at large and will be done later in the Sessions by Justice Maureen Crane-Scott.
Until then, Agard remains on bail but, on Monday, the former Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) employee must find his way to the Probation Department for one of three reports ordered by the court.
He will also be the subject of psychological and psychiatric reports.
The trial of Agard, a former QEH porter, of Near Mangrove Land, St Philip, led off the new Sessions of Criminal Sittings in the No. 5 Supreme Court last week Monday.
He was arraigned that on December 14, 2007, he committed an act of a lewd, obscene and disgusting nature and outraged public decency by having sexual intercourse with the body of Donna Brathwaite.
The case, the first of its kind in Barbados, saw 11 witnesses taking the stand, including hospital orderly Mark Griffith, who said he had gone into the morgue to deposit two severed limbs in a freezer, when on pulling open one door that was already slightly ajar, he saw a sight that put fear in his heart.
“The first thing I saw was one of the dead bodies exposed from the way they usually bring them down from the ward,” he told the court.
Sight made him run
“I saw another object in there with her. It was a human object. I saw an individual on top of the dead,” Griffith said.
The sight, he testified, was enough to make him run.
When police interviewed Agard he told them, in a written statement that he was accustomed to “dealing” with the “deads”.
When asked to explain “dealing with”, he told police: “Sexing the dead women, nuh.”.
He told police his actions were as a result of too much brandy and a failure to ejaculate after having sex with two different women.
But, in his defence from the dock, Agard categorically denied having sex with the body of Donna Brathwaite.
Agard was represented by Douglas Trotman, while Principal Crown Counsel Alliston Seale prosecuted.
Agard had no last words for the court.
His attorney asked that Agard be allowed to remain on bail pending the completion of the reports.
“He has been on bail since 2007,” Trotman said.
Prosecutor Seale did not object and the judge consented to the request.
