Deniece Cornejo, Vhong Navarro and Cedric Lee FILE PHOTOS
Comedian and TV host Vhong Navarro on Thursday stepped up his counteroffensive against his maulers and two rape accusers.
In Manila, the ABS-CBN star filed perjury complaints in the city prosecutor’s office against model Deniece Cornejo, who had accused him of rape, and her supposed “rescuers”—businessman Cedric Lee, his sister, Bernice Lee, and friends JP Calma and Simeon “Zimmer” Raz.
The 37-year-old actor filed another perjury complaint in Pasig City, this time against Roxanne Cabañero, a former beauty pageant contestant who also sued him for rape days after Cornejo’s allegations made headlines.
Navarro’s complaint in Manila wanted Cornejo and company penalized for the “demonstrable falsehoods” contained in the counteraffidavits they earlier submitted to the Department of Justice in connection with Navarro’s complaint for serious illegal detention, the actor’s lawyer, Alma Mallonga, told reporters.
“Based on evidence, it’s very clear that what they said are perjurious. They themselves are contradicting each other. We used what one respondent said to show that what the other said was not true,” Mallonga said.
The lawyer cited Cornejo’s claim that her “friends” caught Navarro in the act of raping her at her condominium unit in Bonifacio Global City and rescued her from the actor on the night of Jan. 22.
In the complaint, Navarro said Lee “went out in public asserting that he had caught me committing ‘attempted rape’ against Deniece, that he saw me supposedly on top of Deniece, naked, with Deniece shouting.”
Navarro also noted that in the police blotter, the first public record of the incident, Cornejo signed as the victim while Lee and his sister, Bernice, signed as witnesses.
“[But] in his new tale, Lee now states that he was only told about the rape by Deniece Cornejo and [that he] arrived at her condominium unit to see me throwing kicks and punches [and] only at one person, ‘Zimmer,’” the complaint said.
It also noted that Lee, in his counteraffidavit, had maintained that “contrary to Vhong’s allegation, I never asked money from him. Instead, it was Vhong who suddenly offered to pay any amount to compensate Deniece for all the damage to her unit.”
“[But] precisely because there was no rape, as asserted by Lee, his allegation that I volunteered to pay money is also a falsehood,” Navarro said in the perjury complaint.
Navarro also cited the text messages he supposedly got from Lee asking him for money.
In Pasig, Navarro filed both a perjury complaint against the 24-year-old Cabañero and his reply to the rape complaint she filed last month.
Again assisted by Mallonga, he also came with his younger brother, Fercedan, producer Moises Manio and three members of Navarro’s dance group Streetboys, namely Abner Molina, Jason Jolloso and Izzan Sabello.
Fercedan, Manio, Molina, Jolloso and Sabello filed their respective affidavits helping Navarro belie the woman’s allegations that she was raped by the actor on the night of April 24, 2010, at a hotel in Ortigas.
They said it was impossible, since Navarro was with them performing in a concert at Island Cove Resort in Cavite province from 5 p.m. on April 24 to 1 a.m. on April 25.
“We are just exercising our rights, which we think will protect Vhong, and telling those who are maligning him that we are not taking this sitting down,” Mallonga told reporters.