Dacera mom, Makati cops face charges

MANILA, Philippines — Five men accused of raping and killing flight attendant Christine Dacera yesterday filed charges against Dacera’s mother, Makati police officers and several others.

Lawyer Mike Santiago – representing Rommel Galido, John Pascual dela Serna III, Gregorio de Guzman, Clark Rapinan and Valentine Rosales – filed two sets of complaints with the Makati prosecutor.

He reiterated that his clients made “all legal steps to defend themselves and restore their honor and dignity in the community.”

Santiago asked the fiscal to charge Dacera’s mother Sharon, Dacera’s cousin Katherine Anne Facelo and Sharon’s friend and doctor Marichi Ramos Fong with perjury, libel, cyber libel, slander,  malicious prosecution, incriminating innocent persons and intriguing against honor.

Dacera family spokesman and lawyer Roger “Brick” Reyes, Makati police acting chief Col. Harold Depositar, city police investigation unit chief Capt. Danilo Oamil and Dacera case investigators Cpl. Louie Lopez and S/Sgt. Jun Alimurong were also charged with the same offenses.

In another set of complaints, Galido and Dela Serna charged Sharon, Fong, Facelo, Depositar, Oamil, Lopez and Alimurong with unlawful arrest, illegal detention, unjust vexation and grave coercion.

According to their 13-page complaint-affidavit, the five men accused Sharon of “shaming, embarrassing and ridiculing” them by asserting that they gave illegal drugs to her daughter Christine and raped her before she died on New Year’s Day.

She kept declaring this to the public and in her statement filed before the city police even if the medico-legal report declared that she died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm, the men said.

Sharon repeatedly claimed foul play in her daughter’s death even if pieces of evidence her camp filed before the fiscal – including footage from the City Garden Grand Hotel where Christine and the five men, among others, held a New Year’s Eve party – showed otherwise, according to the complaint.

The men also accused Facelo and Ramos-Fong of conspiring with Sharon by inferring that Christine struggled before she died as shown in the bruises and abrasions even in her genitals, hence the likelihood of foul play and rape.

Galido, Dela Serna, De Guzman, Rapinan and Rosales alleged that Makati police officials and Reyes maliciously pushed filing charges of rape with homicide against 11 respondents, including them, despite earlier findings that showed Dacera died a natural death.

Galido and Dela Serna also cried foul over the actions of Sharon, Facelo, Fong, Depositar, Oamil, Lopez and Alimurong to charge them with rape with homicide, to keep them under police custody from Jan. 1 to 6, and for releasing their cell phones only on Feb. 3.