20 months' jail for beating, force-feeding infant girl

CONVICTED child-beater Dexter Gobin was sentenced on Thursday to 20 months in jail after he and his Jamaican wife were both found guilty of assaulting an infant girl under their care in 2015.

The beating was caught on camera. In the video, which went viral, the child was beaten by a man who force-fed her a bottle of baby milk.

Gobin and his wife Yanique Taylor-Gobin were charged with wilfully assaulting a child, on May 17 and 24, 2015. The charges were laid indictably under the Children Act.
The toddler’s identity was never revealed.
Gobin was sentenced by Magistrate Adrian Darmanie at a virtual hearing and sentenced to 20 months.

The magistrate started with a sentence of four years and after a one-third discount was given for Gobin's guilty plea and the five months he spent in custody, he was left with 27 months. A further discount was given for his payment of compensation to the child's mother.
Taylor-Gobin also pleaded guilty and she was sentenced two years’ imprisonment, after getting her discount.

Because she had already spent two years at the Women’s Prison in Arouca before she got bail in 2017, the magistrate held that she had already served her sentence.
Gobin had spent five months in prison before he was able to access the $150,000 granted to him.
The couple was represented by attorney Shervon Noreiga who, in a mitigation plea, said Gobin was remorseful and had paid $10,000 compensation to the child’s mother. Prosecutor Khadija Sinanan presented the court with a victim-impact statement in which the child’s mother said the money is used for counselling for the child.

The couple was arrested after a social media campaign was launched after the video showed a traumatised infant girl being savagely beaten by a man when she refused to drink from a bottle fast enough for his satisfaction.

During his five-month stay at the prison, Gobin complained he had been beaten by prison officers as they re-enacted scenes from the viral video.
It was alleged three prison officers slapped and hit Gobin on the head while forcing him to drink from a soft-drink bottle containing milk.