DOJ suspends guard who raped witness

The Witness Protection Program guard who allegedly raped a 29-year-old witness he was supposed to protect has been suspended indefinitely, Justice Secretary Hernando Perez said yesterday.

"He is suspended. And after his suspension, he will be transferred to the Cordillera region," Perez announced the administrative sanction, as he ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to investigate WPP guard Gerry Lintan, alias Rustom Yap.

The WPP guards — composed of men from the Intelligence Service Operations Group (ISOG) — had gone through rigid scrutiny, the justice secretary said, but a closer re-examination is now imperative to make sure that "they can be trusted with the life of our witnesses."

The victim said she was raped by Lintan on March 26 inside the apartment in Quezon City where she and her family, along with another family, were housed. She filed a case with the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

She and her guard-husband and their four-year-old daughter have moved to another apartment while they await the progress of her complaint.

Lintan claimed that they were sweethearts. But the victim said she treated the suspect’s courtship as a joke and that she even talked about it with her housemates and the other guards.

Monica Pagunsan, information chief of the justice department, said the alleged rape victim was no longer covered by the program as of March 8. She said the woman was terminated from WPP on that date. – With Efren Danao