A Guatemalan national, who makes $7 to $8 a week in her native country, was sentenced in Supreme Court to six years in prison after she pleaded guilty to importing cocaine.

Sylvia Esquivel, 28, a trader in Guatemala, told the court yesterday that her two children were back in Guatemala and the caregiver was beating them. They had also just lost their father.

Esquivel, who speaks little English and needed a translator in court, was stopped and searched at the Bermuda International Airport when she arrived on a flight from New York.

The court learned that she was taken to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for an X-ray. She handed over nine, cylindrical pellets from her bra. She later excreted 71 of the same pellets. The pellets were analysed and contained 793.29 grams of the drug cocaine. On the streets of Bermuda the drugs would have yielded between $84,000 and $235,000.

She told the Police she was recruited in Guatemala to bring what she believed to be money to Bermuda. She was supposed to receive $1,000 for the job.

On the stand yesterday she said she was recruited under false circumstances at first. She said the man that recruited her was threatening and she feared for her children.

Through a translator she said: ?This has served as a very large experience to not be conned any more by people like him.?

Crown counsel Oonagh Vaucrosson said Esquivel only did it for ?financial purposes? and only thought of herself and not ?the community at large?.

?The only mitigating circumstance is that she has pleaded guilty and has no previous convictions,? she added.

She asked the court for a six to eight year sentence.

Defense lawyer Larry Scott said Esquivel was from a ?humble background? and of ?little education?.

?The mule carries the full burden of this crime,? he added.

Chief Justice Richard Ground quoted from a court of appeals decision handed down last year that said the courts must ?steel themselves against a sentimental view? when it comes to defendants in vulnerable situations.

He said:?This is a difficult case for me because I have just sentenced a man to eight years for half the amount of what you had (see story above). I?m going to take into account your special circumstances with your children.?