BACOLOD CITY, Philippines—A breeder of fighting cocks here has been sentenced to 40 years imprisonment for the rape of an 11-year-old neighbor in 2006.
Judge Ray Alan Drilon of the Bacolod City Regional Trial Court Branch 41 on Wednesday sentenced Bernie Azucena Espino to reclusion perpetua and to pay his victim, whose name has been withheld by the Inquirer, P75,000 in moral damages and P25,000 in exemplary damages.
The 11-year-old girl told the court that at about 7 p.m. on March 8, 2006, she was on her way to a neighbor’s house to watch television when Espino called her to buy him rum and cigarettes.
According to the information filed in court, the victim’s mother had formerly worked for Espino as his house help.
When she returned with the liquor and cigarettes, he held her hands and pulled her inside his room where he raped her and warned her not to tell anybody, the child told the court.
On returning to her house, the child told her mother what had happened and the latter immediately reported the matter to the police, who later arrested Espino.
The child told the court she had been raped by Espino several times and she finally told her mother about it so the abuse would finally stop.
Dr. Eli Cong, Bacolod medico legal officer, said that from his examination, it appeared that the 11-year-old had been raped twice in February and on March 8, 2006.
Cong’s findings confirmed the revelations of the child that she was previously abused by Espino but she did not tell anybody about it at the time, the judge said.
Espino denied raping the minor, saying he was having a massage between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. on March 8, 2006.
But the judge said, even granting for the sake of argument, that Espino did have a massage, he had the opportunity because he was in the neighborhood at the time the offense was committed.
Espino did not establish the physical impossibility for him to be at the scene of the crime when it was committed, the judge added.
“The alibi of the defendant cannot outweigh the testimony of the rape victim, who gave a spontaneous and straightforward recollection of the incident,” he said. The judge noted that there was no evidence that the victim had been coached.
The lame excuse that the charges were filed because the child’s mother was heavily indebted to Espino was hardly persuasive and too farfetched a motive to falsely accuse him, the judge said.
The court could not find any appearance of malice or falsity in the testimony of the child, he added.