Man gets 2 death verdicts for raping own daughter

A jobless man was meted two death sentences and another life prison term yesterday by the Pasig City court for virtually making his 16-year-old daughter a sex slave for three years since 1995.

Judge Librado Correa ordered the accused Juanito de la Cruz, of 304 Caruncho Road, Barangay Mangahan, Pasig City to indemnify his daughter P450,000 in actual and moral damages.

De la Cruz denied the charges against him. But Correa ruled that his denial "is too flimsy to be accorded favorable consideration."

Court records showed that De la Cruz raped her daughter four times inside their house in Pasig City from March 8, 1995 to July 24, 1998.

The girl was raped three more times, the last on July 24, 1998, after his father had a drinking spree with his friends. She said his father's friends witnessed the rape.

The victim testified that she kept her ordeal to herself out of fear.

But she mustered enough courage a few months later and told her mother about her father's sexual attacks. The girl was accompanied by her mother when she filed a complaint before the Pasig City police.