4-month-old baby raped in Cebu; Pa, 5 others tagged as suspects

CEBU CITY—Six individuals are being eyed as possible suspect in the abduction and rape of a four-month-old infant in Barangay (village) Perrelos in Carcar City, 42 km south of here.

Among them was the infant’s father, said PO3 Camia Codo of Carcar City Police Station Women’s Desk.

She admitted that the police had difficulty finding the perpetrator in the absence of an eyewitness.

Initial investigation showed that the infant was taken before midnight of Wednesday while she was sleeping with her mother inside her home. Only curtains served as door of the house.

The father was sleeping in another room with their other children, said Codo.

The baby was covered in blood when she was found in a coconut field, 100 meters away from the family’s house.

Her diaper and a bottle of coconut wine were found about a meter away from the baby.

According to Codo, an old woman, who is a distant relative of the baby, heard the baby cry when she went outside to pee. The woman, however, didn’t check it out because she thought it was a ghost.

When the old woman asked help from other neighbors, they found the baby.

Physicians at the Carcar District Hospital found lacerations in the baby’s private parts which caused the bleeding.

Codo said that the physicians confirmed that the baby was raped.

In an official statement, Carcar City public information officer Candice Acuña said that the infant was recuperating at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City.

She said that there were lacerations, blood and grass particles found in the vagina area of the infant but no semen was recovered.

“Mostly all of the suspects are drug [surrenderers] except for the father. Rest assured, we are doing everything we can and we will not stop until the culprit is caught,” Acuña said.