After three months, pastor, Mervin Budram appeared before the magistrate's court this morning in Belmopan, where he was arraigned on charges of aggravated assault of an indecent nature. This comes after multiple allegations of sexual abuse made against him. While only 5 accusers are known, he was slapped with 13 counts. Jomarie Lanza has a summary of Budram's case.
When the news first broke social media back in Early August, that a prominent Belmopan Gospel singer was accused of multiple cases of child molestation, The Jubilee Ministries along with the National Evangelical Association, both issued statements days after the accusations came to light, and as more victims began to emerge to tell their story. And it is through one of these releases, we learned that the jubilee ministries had launched an independent investigation within their group, which led to additional exposures, and evidence of abuse carried out by their active church member at the time, Mervin Budram. Things fell silent both within the church and on the media shortly after, and many were left to question if the justice system would be able to secure a conviction against Budram after all these years.
And as it turns out, an embarrassed Budram, slipped in and out from the Belmopan Magistrates court this morning, where he was charged for 13 complaints of aggravated Assault of an indecent nature. We were informed that Budram was taken into police custody over the weekend, and early this morning, he appeared before the court where he was charged, and granted bail in the sum of $6,000 plus two sureties of the same amount. He was represented in court by Rachel Montejo on behalf of Arthur Saldivar. And we note that as Budram hurried his way into the back of the police mobile, and was carted off back into police custody, no representatives from the church were in sight. We reached out to his attorney for a comment but received no response.
We will continue to follow this case.
