A visitor from the United Kingdom who was slapped with assault charges has been freed after the charges were dropped on Wednesday.
James O’Rourke, 44, was scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday after he was accused of slapping a woman – Chairman Alleyne, on her buttocks.
According to O’Rourke, a first time visitor to the island, he left the all-inclusive Sandals Royal on May 19, in search of cigarettes and went to the nearest ATM at a service station.
He said that while at the ATM, Alleyne started harassing him for money.
“I handed her $50 just to purely leave me alone. I then went to the counter to buy cigarettes and they were still harassing me, asking me for money,” he told Nation News.
O’Rourke said he later paid for his cigarettes and “the motion of my hand, she claimed I slapped her behind”.
When he appeared in court earlier this week, O’Rourke pleaded guilty to assaulting a woman and resisting the police.
However, on Wednesday , O’Roukre, a managing director from West Midlands, England, was reprimanded and discharged, based on footage from closed-circuit television cameras.
Following the dismissal of the case, O’Roukre, who spent a night in prison, vowed to never return to the island.
“I would never come back to Barbados in my life. You could not pay me £10 million. I have been abused and discriminated. It is disgusting,” he told National News
O’Rourke, who is scheduled to leave the country on Thursday said he had been warned about “the local women, whether they were Jamaican that come over here”, that they “trap the white men and try to extort money.
“And this was the perfect example of what happened. Thank God the technology has proven that I am an innocent man and I was released immediately because that jail was a dangerous place,” he said.
“So thank the Lord for the CCTV because . . . I was released immediately.”
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