Iriga mayor’s wife files charges of marital rape

The wife of Iriga City Mayor Emmanuel Alfelor broke her silence yesterday and accused her husband of sexually and physically abusing her in their 22 years of being together.

Aside from this, Madeleine Blanche Tosoc-Alfelor, 38, sought the help of the Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation in going after her husband for alleged involvement in multiple murders and other criminal activities in Camarines Sur. She claimed being mayor, he wields influence not only in their city but in the whole of Camarines Sur and has become untouchable along with his men.

The woman said she already filed a petition for the annulment of their marriage before a Quezon City regional trial court with the help of her lawyers and new-found friends after her escape on Dec. 10. Because of these actions, Mrs. Alfelor said she now fears for her life and that of her family since the mayor will surely try to silence them.

Alfelor said she wants to obtain justice and in the process inspire other victims of marital rape and violence to come out in the open and fight.

"For 22 years, I was made a sex slave, was battered and abused by my own husband. For 22 years, I lived in fear," a crying Mrs. Alfelor read from a complaint she filed against the mayor.

According to her, she was only 15 when her husband, whose late father Felix Alfelor was then governor of Camarines Sur, abducted, abused her and made her a prisoner for one year.

"I was held incommunicado and in different safe houses — away from my family, away from everybody except from him. When I was finally allowed to join society again, I was always, however, under the watchful and zealous eyes of my husband’s bodyguards," she recounted.

Mrs. Alfelor alleged her husband was jealous, hot-tempered and would beat her up every time she refused to have sex with him or even at the slightest provocation. She said he was such a bully that when he ran for mayor in 1992, he lost because the issues of immorality, their unmarried status and his being a woman-beater were used against him.

In 1994, Alfelor said he married her and pretended to care for her and their family for show. The following year, he was elected mayor and became a political figure independent from his brothers in the House of Representatives. Alfelor also implicated her husband in the killing of three men whom she identified as Reynaldo Licup, an employee of the Department of Trade and Industry; Geoffrey Remodo, a driver, and Rommel Barrelos, a tire vulcanizing shop owner.

She said they were gunned down on Dec. 4, inside an eatery along the Baao Diversion Road, upon the orders of her husband and City Administrator Aldo Turiano in connivance with seven others. The murders were perpetrated by her husband’s goons and bodyguards led by a certain Jessie Intia, a certain Ka Trese, a former member of the New People’s Army and Alvin Padi, a policeman detailed as security officer to the mayor, the woman alleged.

A few days before she managed to escape, she said her husband threatened to kill her and her family once they report his involvement in the crime.