Ex-police training school exec faces sexual harassment raps

The former chief of the Philippine National Police Regional Training School in barangay Apas has been slapped with sexual harassment before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas.

Superintendent Eldorado Gallego, a native of Pagadian City, is also facing an administrative case before the National Police Commission for a similar case.

It was P01 Blaire Francis Cuevas-Quezon, a member of the Cebu Provincial Police Office, who filed the complaint against the police official.

Quezon has decided to file a separate case against Gallego before the Ombudsman after the Napolcom investigators had found probable cause of her complaint and even upgraded Gallego's case from pre-charged status to a formal investigation.

Like the Napolcom, the Ombudsman will also conduct a pre-charge investigation into the complaint.

Gallego was relieved from his post after his alleged sexual harassment acts against Quezon reached to the attention of Margarita Cojuanco, the president of the Philippine Public Safety College.

But Gallego strongly denied Quezon's allegations and even described the policewoman in his counter-affidavit as being paranoid. He said Quezon just wanted to destroy his good image.

Napolcom investigators, however, rejected his defense.

Quezon insisted that she was a victim of Gallego's sexual harassment through his several text messages to her cellular phone. She even claimed that he forced her to go out of the camp for dinner and later to a disco.

Some of Quezon's police-classmates, whom she asked to monitor her while she was with Gallego, executed affidavits that they saw Gallego held Quezon's hand and sometimes laid his arm around the policewoman's shoulder.

Quezon said every time she received text messages from Gallego, she would let her fellow trainees read them. She recalled that on one Saturday night while she was alone inside the women's barracks, Gallego sent her a text message instructing her to put off the lights because he would get inside.

The women's barracks is off limits to males, even if they are officials, but Quezon claimed that Gallego violated the policy by going inside and pretended to buy load for his cell phone.

Quezon said she even managed to take a photograph of Gallego through her cellular phone inside the women's barracks.

The 72 police trainees taking up public safety junior leadership course petitioned for Gallego's relief, prompting Cojuanco to relieve him out of Central Visayas.

The alleged sexual harassment started when Gallego reportedly instructed Quezon to teach the recruits undergoing training at the RTS annex building in barangay Gaas, Balamban and personally drove her there.

While they were on the way home, Gallego reportedly stopped the car and courted her even though they are already both married.

But Gallego denied the allegation and said that every time he is out of his office, his official driver would always accompany him. - Rene U. Borromeo/LPM