Gang rapes 3-yr.-old girl
By Karlon N. Rama
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
Charges of rape and child abuse were filed yesterday against six men believed to be behind the gang-rape of a three-year-old girl in Minglanilla town last Saturday night.
Police Insp. Carlos Reyes of the Minglanilla PNP charged Lydon “Paghid†Powao Aventajado, Archibal “Archie†Tabuena Cañete, Emmanuel Caballero Sepayla, Serge Rio “Puloy†Lao Mantalaba, Ramil “Rabal†Aliño Laspuña, and Placido “Flash†Geraldez Taña.
All six, residents of Ward 1 in Poblacion, Minglanilla, were brought to the Office of the Cebu Provincial Prosecutor late yesterday afternoon. They will be brought back there today for an inquest investigation on the capital offense. They will not have the option to post bail.
Grabbed
Che-che (not her real name) was snatched from inside her father’s tricycle while it was parked near the Minglanilla Public Market around 7 p.m. Saturday.
Her mother and brother, 9, had gone into the market while her father went to a nearby bakeshop, to get the children something to eat. When he returned to the vehicle, the girl was gone.
The couple went to the police at 8 p.m. to get help in searching for their daughter.
They only saw her again the next morning.
According to PO1 Rea Taladua, the Minglanilla PNP’s women and children’s protection desk officer, Che-che was found near a dead creek, about a hundred meters from the Minglanilla police station.
Ward 1 Barangay Councilor Alfredo Tangaha called up the child’s parents around 6 a.m. to tell them that their daughter had been found.
She’d been raped.
Tormented
Her tormentors had hit her head with a rock and, while she was unconscious, placed the child inside a sack.
Crying, she somehow managed to crawl out. People heard her crying and traced the sound until they found her. She had a lot of bruises. She had kiss marks on her neck. Her genitalia was still bleeding. She was naked.
She was brought to the Cebu South General Hospital in Naga, Cebu, and was referred to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) for examination. The results were conclusive. She’d been raped.
The police’s first break on the case, Taladua narrated, happened when they received information from sources about a group of men that was seen in the area where the child was found.
Pictures
Eight men were invited to the station for questioning and, with their consent, police took their pictures.
The photos were brought to the VSMMC, where Che-che was still confined, and were presented to her for identification.
“When I started talking about the suspects, the victim started to shout and cry hysterically. She kept on shouting, ‘Naa’y kutsilyo’ (They’ve got a knife),†Taladua said in her affidavit.
The officer instead showed her the photographs, and the girl identified five as the ones who had raped her: Cañete, Aventajado, Laspuña, Mantalaba, Sepayla.
“I repeated the process and shuffled the pictures but she consistently pointed to the same five suspects,†Taladua narrated.
Witness
The second big break led to the identification of the sixth respondent.
Taladua said they were already preparing the complaint against the first five respondents, on the basis of the girl’s identification, when an 18-year-old boy walked into the police station.
The boy, name withheld for security, issued an affidavit that narrated how he, at 8 p.m. last Saturday, saw the sixth respondent, Taña, leading a child towards Barangay Tulay, Minglanilla.
He noticed that the child was wearing a light-colored blouse and presumed that the child must have been Taña’s daughter.
Taladua said the witness asked about what the victim was wearing at the time of her disappearance and, after taking a look at the bloodstained blouse that the police had recovered from the crime scene, confirmed that it was the same one worn by that girl he saw Taña lead by the hand. (KNR)
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Gang rapes 3-yr.-old girl
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