The Regional Trial Court has acquitted a suspect in a celebrated gang rape case here in Dumaguete two years ago.
RTC Branch 42 Judge Marie Rose Inocando —Paras dropped the charges of Forcible Abduction with Rape against Dean Bongoyan in a decision promulgated last Friday.
Bongoyan was allegedly identified by the victim, then a nursing student at a local university, to have committed the crime on January 21, 2009 together with three other still-unidentified suspects.
The complainant alleged that the suspects grabbed her hair and body and dragged her into a Toyota Fortuner vehicle where she was rendered unconscious after her mouth was covered with a handkerchief smelling of chloroform.
But Judge Paras, in acquitting Bongoyan, noted that the victim filed two conflicting medical certificate issued by the City Health Office and the Provincial Hospital on the presence of lacerations in her vagina.
Judge Paras cited the ruling of the Supreme Court in People vs. Mauro de Jesus which ruled that “the presence of two medical reports, one from the NBI yielding a negative result and the other from the PNP Crime Laboratory stating that Ma. Cristina is in a non-virgin state, behooves us to favor the proposition that appellant is innocent of rape. This is in consonance with the rule that where the evidence in a criminal case is evenly balanced, the constitutional presumption of innocence tilts in favor of the accused.”
The Court also noted six disturbing inconsistencies in the complainant’s narration of events and circumstances of her abduction. Among them was her insistence that she was made to inhale chloroform yet, she did not sustain any chemical burns which is among the effects of skin contact with the chemical substance despite her being of fair complexion, the Court said.
Paras also found unacceptable the fact that the victim sent a text message after a call despite her being already weak and dizzy; her failure to identify the person of the accused in the alleged calls and text messages she made; the failure of the complainant and her witnesses to present their cellphones in court; and her singling out the accused while maintaining in the preliminary hearing that she cannot identify the other three accused because they are not close.
Lawyer Raymund J.A. Mercado, Bongoyan’s counsel, described the judgement as a triumph of justice.¬¬