Lumsden who was sentenced yesterday maintained his innocence throughout the trial that concluded in December, when a 12-member jury of his peers unanimously found him guilty of the unlawful carnal knowledge of the now 15-year-old.

The Jamaica man stood unmoved in the prison’s box, as the judge handed down the sentence.

The utter silence was disturbed only by the sobs of his niece who shuffled her belongings as she left the High Court with red eyes and tears streaming down her face.

Lumsden, whose employment ended at the country’s lone penal facility in 2013 because of a possession of cannabis conviction, had been a prison officer for 13 years and previously served as a soldier in the Jamaica Defence Force for 13 years, as well.

Justice Keith Thom told the convicted man and his attorney John Fuller that he had violated the “much trust placed” in him by exploiting the first opportunity he was alone with the child to commit the act that left her psychologically scared.

“You have taken away her innocent years. In the victim impact report, she says she wished she had never met you. She thinks you are a sick individual and she does not think she is in a place to forgive you.

“We talk about the harm on the person, but we must look on the psychological harm; the violence on the mind which could live with them all their lives,” Judge Thom said.

The judge noted that with counseling, the teen could try to get over the rape, but Lumsden’s act proved so devastating that her grades suffered and she repeated a year in school.