Rape victim needs security, healing from ordeal—women’s group

JUSTICE won’t be enough for the 21-year-old woman who was repeatedly raped by a Department of Justice (DOJ) marshal in a government safe house.

The government should also make sure that it will provide therapy to help the victim recover from her ordeal, a women’s organization said yesterday.

“She is not given the healing that she needs. She is being held there, to be a witness to her own case. She was wounded and she’s not even being treated for her wounds,” Tessie Fernandez, executive director of Lihok Pilpina Foundation Inc. said.

The victim went to the Guadalupe police precinct to request for a security escort yesterday, claiming that she received threatening phone calls from an unidentified person.

But PO2 Christine Luardo, chief of the Guadalupe police’s women and children’s desk, said the victim’s request will be endorsed to her superiors.

“As of this time, the victim requested for time to rest. Due to stress, she couldn’t concentrate well. We respect her plea,” Luardo said.

The victim was under the DOJ witness protection program for testifying against the two men who raped her in 2008.

Fernandez questioned the DOJ’s capacity to handle the rape victim’s welfare. She said their group and other women’s groups in Cebu are monitoring the case.

Fernandez questioned the service providers and the kind of facilities the safe house has, saying there should be a separate facility for men and women.

“The government’s capacity is being questioned here because of their basic lack of understanding of sexually abused people,” she said.

Luardo said they asked the DOJ’s Witness Protection Office in Central Visayas to give them the complete name of the marshal who allegedly raped the victim.

The DOJ imposed a three-month suspension without pay against the marshal identified only as a certain “Billy.” The suspension started last Saturday. Correspondent Christine Emily L. Pantaleon and Reporter Ador Vincent Mayol