The Department of Justice has found probable cause to indict the municipal treasurer of San Francisco town in Quezon for rape charges.

In a resolution duly approved by Acting Chief State Prosecutor Severino Gaña, Jr., the investigating prosecutor, SP Gilmarie Fe Pacamarra, has recommended the filing of criminal charges for two (2) counts of rape against respondent Floro Flores. An information, with no bail recommended, is set to be filed within the week before the RTC in Lucena City, Quezon.

It said “the complainant appears to have been consistent in her allegation that respondent raped her twice and that her affidavits of desistance were executed against her will.” Aside from the presence of all the elements of rape under Art.266-A, RPC, as amended by RA 8353, the resolution went on to add “when a woman, more so if she is minor, says that she has been raped, she says in effect all that is necessary to show that rape was committed.”

The case stemmed from the complaint of a 12-year-old student employed as a house help of the respondent’s family. As the school opening was about to start in June 2008 last year, she asked permission to just go home to continue her studies. The respondent was scheduled to go home to their province and asked to ride on the vehicle where she was first sexually attacked inside the back seat of the van when the driver was told to buy food. Flores took advantage in abusing her while it was raining hard as the driver has not returned due to the heavy downpour. She revealed that the second sexual attack was perpetrated early nighttime barely a week after the first assault inside their house while her parents and siblings were still in the farm. The bestial act was incidentally witnessed by a male neighbor who saw the respondent entered the complainant’s house, threatening her which prompted him to ask for help. The police found the respondent inside the house and brought him to the station.

However, after the witness and the victim were subpoenaed to appear before a prosecutor, they failed to do so. It was only the mother who appeared and affirmed the statement of her daughter. By the turn of unusual events, the complainant showed out before the prosecutor; denying to have been abused and had even requested the assistance of the local DSWD officer to take custody of her; and implicating her own mother for physical abuse and three other prominent people from the town to have forced her to accuse the respondent for rape charges. As a result of her statement, a resolution was issued , dismissing for lack of merit the complaint against the respondent.

After a resolution was issued, the complainant filed a Motion for reconsideration and before the provincial prosecutor could act on it, a Motion to transfer the preliminary investigation was filed since a kidnapping case filed against the respondent was relatedly intertwined with the rape case. Later, the case was ordered transferred to the Department Prayer in the motion submitted included that her statement on which the dismissal of the case was based had been spuriously prepared and fatally defective and for having been secured under duress and executed in violation of Art. 220 of the Family Code.

Respondent denied having raped the complainant on those occasions. In his counter-affidavit, he stated that in the first incident, he told the driver to get the victim from the van to join them after their food was ready, adding that as the victim did not want to get down to eat , both of them (respondent and driver) were altogether when they returned to the vehicle from the nearby restaurant. He denied the second incident to have transpired , insisting that the complainant was being forced by their neighbors to disclose something unusual happened inside their house that night. He bluntly rebuffed participation in the kidnapping of the complainant, stating she was just trying to correct what she had done by escaping from her parents.

However, the resolution explained “ the affidavit of the driver of the vehicle (FX Tamaraw) that they both alighted and went to the restaurant to eat is not sufficient to overturn the positive identification by the complainant that respondent raped her prior to his getting off the van.”

“Denial and alibi are inherently weak defenses and constitute self-serving negative evidence which can not be accorded greater evidentiary weight than the positive declaration of credible witness,” this repudiated the respondent’s claim while he was in Baguio City when complainant sought his help after the latter escaped from her parents, when she was forced to accuse him of rape. It went on to tell that “respondent could still raise his defense of denial, alibi, ill-motive and non-credibility of the complainant in a full-blown trial considering the intrinsic nature of the crime of rape where it is usually perpetrated in seclusion and only the parties are involved.”