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Victim: Brangman ‘seeks out young men that really need help’

Former Regiment Major and Bermuda Housing Corporation General Manager Glenn Brangman, right, is led out of Supreme Court to a prison van in this file picture.

The former teenage clerk who suffered at the hands of sex attacker Glenn Brangman believes he is typical of his victims.

Mr X was just 19 and in desperate circumstances when he came into Brangman’s orbit in late 2008.

Recently released from prison after being jailed for breaching a probation order, he was homeless and jobless — with a criminal record for theft and dishonesty.

“I believe that he seeks out young men that really need help,” said the victim, now aged 24, whose identity cannot be revealed for legal reasons. “He reaches out to you.”

Brangman, 61, who was then general manager of Bermuda Housing Corporation, offered Mr X accommodation at a BHC property in Southside and a job as a clerk/receptionist in the quango’s Hamilton headquarters.

“All I was trying to do was work in a government job and get some experience so I can improve myself,” Mr X told The Royal Gazette.

Instead, the young man quickly found himself subjected to a string of sexual assaults by his new boss, beginning in January 2009.

He eventually complained of ten assaults to police and to then Ministry of Housing permanent secretary Derrick Binns.

Brangman, of Limehouse Lane, Hamilton Parish, was found guilty of four counts of sexual assault in February 2012 after a Magistrates’ Court trial.

Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo cleared him on four other counts and had earlier dismissed two other charges, in March 2011.

Brangman launched an appeal against his convictions, which was rejected by the Supreme Court in October last year and further rejected by the Court of Appeal yesterday.

In his written complaint to Dr Binns, seen by this newspaper, Mr X said Brangman first assaulted him after collecting him from Warwick Camp one weekend, where he had been taking part in recruit camp as a new conscript.

He said he took him back to his room at Southside and “made an advance on me by touching my genitals”.

He detailed nine other occasions when he said the former Regiment Quartermaster touched or fondled him.

“Whenever I was in my Bermuda Regiment uniform, I was asked by Major Brangman to come in his office and he would touch my genital area,” wrote Mr X.

The last proven assault was on a date unknown in June 2009, when the victim accompanied his boss to look at accommodation for the recently-arrived Uighurs from Guantánamo Bay.

Mr X wrote to Dr Binns: “We were at Clear View Guest House ... when Major Brangman grabbed me and touched me in the genital area again. I tried to push him away but he gripped me firmly by my right arm and he threw me on the bed in the room.

“Major Brangman then got down on his knees, pulled my zipper down to my trousers and put his hand inside my pants and proceeded to fondle me. I was trying to get up and away from him, but he was able to keep me down on the bed.

“A maintenance man came and knocked on the door and that is when Major Brangman jumped up and I was able to get off the bed and fix my clothes.”

Mr X added: “I told Major Brangman to get me back to town, that I would not allow him to touch me again as he would be sorry. I was so mad I wanted to kill him.”

The victim said he did not speak up immediately because he was afraid he would lose his housing and later, after he moved out of the Southside room, his income.

“It was only because I did not want to start going back downhill, being homeless, no job,” he said. “I wanted to really show my family; I was writing to my family while I was in jail that I was turning my life around.”

He was persuaded by his girlfriend to report the alleged assaults after he broke down in front of her and told her what had happened.

She told this newspaper she was stunned, as Brangman was a friend of her parents. “The man really portrays himself as a nice person,” she said.

Although Mr X’s allegations were eventually proven in Magistrates’ Court, where Mr Tokunbo described him as an “honest, credible witness who strove to give a true and accurate account to this court”, his fears about losing his livelihood were well-founded.

His temporary job at BHC ended in July 2009, after both Brangman and his then deputy, Major Barrett Dill, told him in mid-June not to return to work. Mr X has never heard from BHC since.