Brangman jailed after losing sex assault appeal
Sex attacker Glenn Brangman is behind bars today after the Court of Appeal upheld his convictions for assaulting a teenage clerk while in charge of Bermuda Housing Corporation.
The 61-year-old former Bermuda Regiment quartermaster was taken into custody immediately after the appeal panel of three judges gave their ruling yesterday.
Wearing a green blazer, he showed little emotion as he was led out of Supreme Court Two by prison officers, stopping only to shake the hand of a friend in the public gallery.
Brangman will be eligible for parole from prison after serving a year of his three-year sentence next November.
Justices Edward Zacca, Sir Anthony Evans and Sir Austin Ward rejected his lawyer Shade Subair’s argument that Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo was wrong to convict him of four counts of sexually assaulting the much younger male employee between January and June 2009.
They agreed with Chief Justice Ian Kawaley, who rejected the same appeal by Brangman in October last year.
The panel, in its ruling, said: “The issue in this case was one of credibility. The experienced and learned magistrate believed the evidence of the complainant and disbelieved that of the appellant.
“The making of primary findings of fact was his responsibility and it is only in very rare cases that an appellate court, which did not have the opportunity of seeing and hearing the witnesses, can substitute its own findings of fact for those of the learned magistrate.
“The learned Chief Justice found in the appeal before him that he could find no sufficient basis for disturbing the findings of fact of the learned magistrate. Nor can we.”
Brangman, of Limehouse Lane, Hamilton Parish, has always denied he subjected his victim, Mr X, to a series of sex attacks after offering the 19-year-old employment at BHC’s Hamilton headquarters and accommodation at one of its Southside properties.
The complainant, a troubled young man who was homeless and penniless at the time, was forced to undergo a Magistrates’ Court trial which lasted for more than a year, with countless adjournments between January 2011 and February 2012.
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was rigorously cross-examined by Ms Subair, who suggested to him he had concocted the whole story to financially extort money from BHC and did so only after Brangman accused him of stealing a BlackBerry phone.
But Mr X stuck to his story and Mr Tokunbo, in his ruling, found him to be an “honest, credible witness who strove to give a true and accurate account to this court of what he witnessed”.
The magistrate said coming to court and giving evidence on several occasions was a “difficult and humiliating experience” for the victim, but he showed “nerve and courage” and told the truth.
He said Mr X was a “young and vulnerable man who was on court probation and was desperately trying to turn his life around” when he began working for Brangman and living at Southside.
The magistrate said of Brangman: “I find that neither he nor his witnesses have given me any good reason to doubt the veracity of [the victim] by their evidence.
“I do not believe the defendant was being honest when he denied all of the allegations of sexual assault.”
Ms Subair argued during the appeal that there were inconsistencies in Mr X’s evidence but the justices concluded: “The inconsistencies, such as they were, did not lead the learned magistrate to doubt the veracity of [Mr X], for they were not in respect of the crucial matters connected with the assaults.
“The evidence supported the convictions. The appeal against conviction is dismissed.”
Brangman had previously stood trial for sexually assaulting a soldier in 2001, while he was Quartermaster of the Bermuda Regiment.
He was acquitted of the offence but The Royal Gazette, as part of a long-running investigation into alleged sexual misconduct at Warwick Camp, uncovered similar claims against him by at least 12 other soldiers.
Several former conscripts spoke to us about their ordeals at the hands of Brangman.
We revealed in 2012 how Brangman was forced to retire from the part-time army in 2002 because of the number of sexual misconduct complaints about him.
He was offered the $150,000-a-year job of general manager with the BHC in 2006 by former Regiment commanding officer and then-Housing Minister David Burch, putting him in direct contact with many vulnerable young men.
A further claim of sexual assault was made against Brangman by a BHC tenant in 2010 but the complainant failed to show up on the first day of the Magistrates’ Court Trial.
Brangman first appealed his convictions for sexually assaulting Mr X in the Supreme Court, where he lost his case in October last year and was remanded into custody by Mr Justice Kawaley.
On November 15 last year, he was jailed for his crimes for three-and-a-half years by Mr Tokunbo and immediately appealed the sentence.
Ms Subair applied successfully in the Supreme Court for bail for him two weeks later, pending an appeal of his convictions in the Court of Appeal.
Brangman’s prison sentence was cut to three years by the Chief Justice in April this year and his Court of Appeal matter was heard earlier this month, resulting in yesterday’s ruling.
The only legal route now open to him would be to apply for permission to appeal his convictions to the Privy Council in London. It was not possible to reach Ms Subair for comment on that yesterday.
Glenn Brangman was seen by many as a pillar of the community before his convictions for a string of sex assaults in February 2012.
He served with the Bermuda Regiment between 1971 and 2002, where he was promoted to the rank of Major in 1991.
A familiar figure at Warwick Camp, he was Quartermaster for much of his military service and went by the nickname “Q”.
Brangman was known as a hard-working, meticulous officer who was deeply religious. He trained soldiers and was in charge of hundreds of young cadets, aged 11 to 18.
But behind-the-scenes, a series of sexual misconduct complaints were made about him to his superiors between 1989 and 2002 and rumours swirled around Warwick Camp about his inappropriate behaviour.
He stood trial at Magistrates’ Court in 2001 for sexually assaulting a young conscript but, in accordance with the law, neither he nor his victim were identified during the proceedings and he was ultimately acquitted.
The following year he was forced to retire from military service by the Governor of the day, because of the number of accusations against him, which now numbered 13.
Nothing was made public about his reasons for leaving the Regiment and none of the other complaints led to any criminal charges or formal internal discipline.
He launched a civil lawsuit against the Governor and Regiment commanding officer for forcing him to retire but dropped it in late 2005 after being appointed a consultant to the publicly-funded Bermuda Housing Corporation.
He was later appointed acting general manager by then Housing Minister David Burch and, in 2007, the position was made permanent.
His contract with the quango was not renewed after BHC employee Mr X, Brangman’s teenage sex assault victim, made complaints about him.
Brangman went on to work at Rosedon Hotel in Hamilton, where he was named Employee of the Year in January 2011, as his trial for sexually assaulting Mr X began.
In an advert in The Royal Gazette, the hotel described him as a “very unique individual who always has a smile on his face and is willing to go the extra mile”.
His employers said he volunteered with old people, headed a group of former soldiers known as the Bermuda Volunteer Specialist Team and had established a free school for the underprivileged, Casa Arbol School of Tourism, in the Dominican Republic.
In April 2011, Brangman won one of Belco’s VIP Excellence Heart of the House Awards, for his work at Rosedon.
