Assaulted girlfriend sues PSG member

Another member of the Presidential Security Group is facing criminal charges, this time for assaulting a woman.

Jober Babaran, 29, of the PSG bomb squad, was charged in the Manila Regional Trial Court on Friday for punching his girlfriend who wanted to end their relationship after learning that he was already married with two children. The incident happened in January at the PSG barracks inside Malacañang Park.

Earlier this week, two other members of the elite unit—Sgt. Marvin Gaton and Cpl. Bobby Ates—were arrested in Quezon City for allegedly being part of a group of five men who robbed a car shop.

In the complaint against Babaran, 29-year-old Rose Marie Adalig said he punched her in the face when she tried to get her belongings from his barracks.

The PSG member then told her not to make a scene because his superiors were around. With her lips bleeding, she said: “Don’t treat me that way. I’m hurting.” But Babaran, aiming his fist at the woman, threatened to hurt her again.

Later, she said, she thought of reporting him to the police but he warned that would join the communist New People’s Army should he lose his job,  and then kill all her relatives.

Adalig said Babaran was her classmate and suitor from their high-school days in Isabela province, whom she met again in Manila after 11 years.

Babaran claimed he was a bachelor when he started courting her again. About a year after they started their relationship, however, she learned through a social networking site and Babaran’s siblings that he had a wife and two children in Isabela.

In a resolution, Assistant City Prosecutor Maria Honoria Sison approved the filing of charges against Babaran for violating the law on violence against women and children.

Sison also noted that Babaran failed to appear on the three dates set for the preliminary investigation of Adalig’s complaint.