NAGA CITY—The Department of Justice and the Camarines Sur Provincial Prosecutor’s Office simultaneously decided on April 10, 2006 one rape indictment each against trader Jerbert Yao with no bail recommended for his provisional liberty.

        Yao, a rice trader from Camarines Norte who transferred operation in Naga City, was accused last year by a victim, a female house helper and a minor, of raping her in two separate occasions—one in Camaligan, Camarines Sur and the other one in Naga City.

DOJ’s Resolution
        The DOJ’s resolution pertained to one of the two rape complaints filed against Yao which the Naga City Prosecutor’s Office downgraded to acts of lasciviousness. The justice secretary rectified the wrong notion that only penile penetration constituted rape.

        Signed by Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, the DOJ Resolution dated April 10 under Rape Case I.S. No. 2005-0476 modified the Naga City prosecutor’s decision to rape indictment under Art.-A, par. 2, in relation to Art. 266-B, Revised Penal Code.

        The acts of lasciviousness resolution of the Naga City prosecutor apparently gave weight to the belief that because there was no penile penetration no rape had taken place.

        “Full penetration is not required as the mere introduction of the male organ into the labia of the pundendum constitutes rape, more so with the insertion of the respondent’s finger in the case at bar,” the DOJ Resolution clarified.

        It added: “Moreover, settled is the rule that an insertion of a finger in a vaginal opening constitutes rape under RA 8358.”

        The DOJ resolution also dismissed Yao’s alibi that the victim only wanted to demand money from him.

        “We find hard to believe Yao’s claim that money is the reason for the filing of these charges,” it concluded, while it found “no evidence of improper motives on the part of the minor victim.”

Snag
        But on the rape complaint that happened in Camaligan, Lawyer Noe Botor, counsel of the victim, observed a snag on the action to the motion for reconsideration that he filed last year.

        Botor claimed he found the provincial prosecutor’s office too slow, beyond the reglamentary 60-day period, to resolve the motion for reconsideration that sought to upgrade the attempted rape charge against Yao to rape.

        He said the snag was the clarificatory question, wherein the investigating prosecutors expressed wonder how the victim was able to execute an affidavit in English when she was hardly schooled.

        Botor said he pointed out to associate prosecutor Lawyer Melinda Rodriguez, one of the investigating prosecutors, that it had been stated in the National Bureau of Investigation document that Bicol and Tagalog where the victim was conversant were used when the affidavit was executed. It was only translated into English to conform with existing procedures, he said.

        Rodriguez confirmed she raised that question and as a matter of asking explanation how a girl who cannot even understand English may know words such words as genitalia and vagina.

        “That’s logical,” she added.

        Botor said he filed a motion to inhibit against the associate prosecutor for one reason—for her alleged friendly relations with Yao, who was already a trader when the associate prosecutor was still with the Department of Trade and Industry.

        But Rodriguez said Botor’s claims were totally false as she was even a witness against Yao that time in an issue on rice trading as member of the price monitoring council.

        Botor also pointed out Rodriguez’s failure to give him notice on the clarificatory question and the wrong prohibition of counsel’s assistance in the processing of the responses of the accused and the minor rape victim.

        But Rodriguez said that Botor was informed and that it was not true that the counsels were prohibited to assist their clients.

        Associate prosecutor Lawyer Salvador Reyes, the other investigating prosecutor, said they only requested the counsels to allow them to talk first with the accused and the victim, in which, he said, the lawyers present did not pose opposition.

        He said the clarificatory question was leading to the settlement between the victim and her family and Yao that the victim’s counsel saw as clear violations of rules and procedures.

        Eventually, he said, Rodriguez was made to inhibit on investigating the rape case and that the action on the motion for reconsideration was eventually transferred to Assistant Provincial Prosecutor Eulogio I. Prima.

        Prima decided the resolution of the motion for reconsideration Botor filed under M.C. No. 522-2005 with indictment of Yao for another rape. The resolution he authored, that pinned down Yao for the second rape case, was approved with no bail recommended by Provincial Prosecutor Agapito Rosales.