Pastor and popular gospel singer Vincent Anthony “Tony” Lowe has been found guilty of repeated sexual molestation of a teenager and was remanded to prison yesterday.
The elderly cleric of Mount Standfast, St James, had been on trial before Justice Laurie-Ann Smith Bovell in the No. 4 Supreme originally on a five-count indictment before one of the matters was dismissed and yesterday a jury of five women and four men found him guilty on the other four counts.
Lowe, 71, and head of Prayer Palace Ministries, spent 80 minutes on the witness stand during his defence, claiming that he had admitted and apologised to the teenager’s family only because the mother said she would drop the matter if he confessed.
The victim was 16 at the time and is now 30 years old.
She came home
Lowe was convicted on the charges of indecently assaulting the young woman between January 1, 2011, and March 8, 2013, at Holder’s Hill, St James; at Mount Standfast in another instance between January 1, 2011, and March 8, 2013, and again at Mount Standfast while she lay in a bedroom between the same time period. He is also accused of indecently assaulting the teen on March 8, 2013, while in a vehicle at Wanstead, St James.
The jury deliberated for about two hours before finding him guilty.
The virtual complainant said once she came home to find Lowe there, saying he was waiting on her mother but her mother had not spoken to her about that so she asked him to leave, but he declined and followed her into the room where she was changing her clothes and touched her breasts and vagina.
Another time she was receiving lessons and his wife stepped out of the house and he entered the bedroom where she was and started touching her breasts and genitals. She never spoke to the wife because she was afraid of what her father might do.
The victim said that she visited the house for singing rehearsals and lessons and on one of those occasions while in the bedroom sleeping, she woke to Lowe touching her.
In the deposition of the victim’s deceased grandmother, she said her granddaughter called her crying and screaming that she “can’t take it no more” and that the pastor was always putting his hand where he should not. When the grandmother asked whether she told her parents, the young
woman replied that she did not want to tell her father for fear that he did something that would cause her not to have her “daddy”. The young woman was thinking of suicide, the grandmother had said.
On March 8, 2013, while Lowe was taking some of the youth members to a location he had her sit up front where he molested her.
Her mother said her daughter attended rehearsals in the third bedroom of Lowe’s home which contained equipment. On one occasion, she checked on her daughter when she realised there was no sound of rehearsals.
‘Touching’ her Her daughter eventually told her that Lowe had been “touching” her and during a second meeting with Lowe and his wife he admitted, the mother testified.
Lowe, who was represented by attorney Angella Mitchell-Gittens SC, said the teenager often visited his home without invitation and other times for rehearsals, which took place in the back bedroom which was intended to be a recording studio and contained musical equipment, a computer and a bed. Whenever the complainant was at the house, others were there, he insisted.
Lowe had told the court he was unbothered when his wife said the then teen complained that he touched her and he never asked what she meant by “touch”. He initially denied the touching but after the teen’s mother kept persisting and to end it, he said he had touched her as the relationship had become strained.
“Once I say I touch her, that was the key to bring us here today. I said it thinking it was the end. I respect [the mother’s] word . . . I said yes because I wanted it over and done. She had said if I admit, it is over and I really wanted it over,” Lowe told the court from the stand.
Following yesterday’s verdict, Lowe is expected back in court for presentencing reports and sentencing submissions.
The case was prosecuted by Senior State Counsel Olivia Davis and State Counsel Paul Prescod. ( AC)
