CA reaffirms conviction of OFW

CEBU, Philippines - The Court of Appeals Special 20th Division has reaffirmed the decision of the Regional Trial Court in Cebu City which found an Overseas Filipino Worker guilty for raping his two daughters in 1998.

In 1999, Reynaldo Andus was charged for 30 counts of rape by his twin daughters, then 17 years old, for repeatedly raped them from March to August of 1998 in their house in Crossing Bunga, Don Andres Soriano (formerly Lutopan), Toledo City.

The RTC branch 15 found Andus guilty of the case and gave him a death penalty sentence in 2004.  According to the victims, at the time of the commission of the various counts of rape, the two of them, their father, older brother and their two other younger siblings were sleeping in the same bed. The victims’ mother was already separated from their father and the younger siblings were their half-brothers.

Their mother’s marriage to Andus was also annulled and the girls were in the custody of their father who promised to send them to school.

One of the victims said their father arrived from overseas in February 1998, and it was in the middle of March, at around 9 p.m., while she was watching a television program when he called her to go inside the room to finish ironing his clothes.

Her father started touching her and pointed a knife to her throat to prevent her from screaming. He also threatened to kill their mother and her siblings if she would speak out.

The victim said that prior to this, he would embrace her and fondled her private parts and when she would ask why he did it, he would tell her it was his way of showing his love to her.

She said that after the incident, she moved to another room, but came back to where her father and the rest of the family were sleeping to watch over her twin sister. That night, she saw his father raped her sister, and when she started to get up to help her, he pointed the knife to her sister.   In her testimonies, the twin sister said it happened several times until their father went to work again in August.

Andus denied the charges, saying he was busy attending to his lending business on the dates when he allegedly raped his daughters. He added that at some nights, he was with his girlfriend in Cebu City.

He said the charges were just a ploy by the girls’ mother to gain custody of their children, to which the CA did not subscribe to as he “failed” to prove it.

“This is mere conjecture and obviously, a vain attempt to escape liability from his dastardly acts. It will take a sick and sinister parent to conjure up such a ploy and use an offspring as an engine of malice,” the decision read.

The CA, in view of R.A. No. 9346 entitled An Act Prohibiting the Imposition of Death Penalty in the Philippines, reduced the penalty reclusion perpetua but without eligibility for parole. It also modified the moral and indemnity damages of Andus.

The decision was penned by associate justice Gabriel Ingles and concurred by associate justices Marilyn Lagura-Yap and Maria Elisa Sempio Diy.  (FREEMAN)