A resident of Viga town has been meted the penalty of reclusion perpetua without possibility of parole after being found guilty of raping his own daughter in 2014 and 2015.
In a decision handed down on Nov. 16, 2020, the Regional Trial Court also ordered the man to pay the victim the total amount of P300,000 as civil indemnity, moral and exemplary damages.
Information filed before the Court stated that sometime in April 2014 at around 10 P.M. while she was sleeping beside her siblings, the victim, AAA, was awakened when she felt being pulled towards a larger space in their sleeping area.
She saw her father removing her shorts and panty and then he removed his shorts and brief, after which he moved on top of her.
She tried to shout for help from her sister but he threatened to kill her if she told anyone. The then 11-year old girl just cried, with her father stopping only when her sister awakened.
At the time, she was just 11 years old, the 8th child in a brood of 12, and her mother was working as a stay-in house helper in the poblacion.
Then sometime in December 2015 at around 1 A.M., she woke up and found herself on top of a table in their kitchen and saw her naked father removing her clothes.
The Grade 5 pupil shouted out but her father covered her mouth with his right hand and threatened her, “Mae ka magtutor ta titigbakon taka.”
It was only on March 21 that year that she confided to her adviser what her father did to her.
Testifying before the Court five years later as a 19-year old, the victim said she disclosed the incidents to her mother and sister but they did not believe her, with her mother having no reaction at all.
On Feb. 16, 2016, AAA first told her adviser of an incident early that morning while she was sleeping when her father pulled her feet. She shouted for her mother, who went down from the attic and slept beside her.
A month later, on Mar. 21, she again revealed to her adviser that her father was drunk and when she woke up, she saw him dragging the feet of her sister. She stood up and lit a kerosene lamp, while her father scolded her until he slept beside the feet of her sister.
“Ikaw, sigurado ka na mae ka pa nahiro ni Papa mo?” the teacher asked AAA, who took a long time to answer as she remembered her father’s threats.
But concern for her siblings moved her to confide in her adviser that since she was in Grade 4 she was already molested by her father.
The teacher informed the school head, who called the Viga police station.
Speaking in his own defense, the accused claimed that in April 2014 he was in Manila and stayed with a friend in Quezon City for six months as he had no work, after which he worked for two years in a construction project.
He then transferred to Cainta, Rizal in another construction project for 18 months after which he found another job in Pasay City.
For almost six years, he said he stayed in Manila and did not return home even on family occasions. It was on March 8, 2020 that he was arrested by police officers in Baclaran near the church.
He claimed he was not informed by the police about the rape case filed against him and that neither was he told by his family, especially his wife, about the case when he sent them money.
In her decision, RTC Branch 43 Presiding Judge Lelu P. Contreras cited his admission during the pre-trial conference that on April 2014 and December 2015, he and his daughter were living in the same house, a fact bolstered by the adviser’s testimony that she saw AAA’s parents during the PTA induction ceremony conducted after June 2015.
“The Court finds AAA’s statement very credible,” the judge said, as it was supported by the adviser’s testimony.
It also found no motive on the victim’s part to charge her father with such a serious crime as rape if it did not actually happen.