‘Nicole,’ four GIs finally meet in court

The 22-year-old Filipina and the four American soldiers she accused of raping her in November last year finally faced each other in yesterday’s hearing at the Makati City Regional Trial Court as the rape trial got underway.

Security officer Tomas Corpus, the prosecution’s first witness, testified that he saw the woman intoxicated at the bar at the time she met one of the four Marines, Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith.

Another prosecution witness, Gerald Muyot, said he saw Smith carry the woman out to a van where the alleged sex crime occurred.

The woman sat two rows behind the four Americans, who were seated up front with their attorneys. She wore sunglasses to hide her face from news photographers.

She briefly took them off when the prosecution lawyer asked Corpus to positively identify the rape victim.

The woman — identified only as "Nicole" — briefly stood and told the court she was the victim.

During the hearing, the complainant showed little emotion. She kept her arms folded across her chest and sat almost motionless, listening closely to the proceedings.

But at one point, the woman broke down in tears and had to be comforted by relatives and members of women’s groups.

During a five-minute break, she held on to her therapist and said, "Please, don’t leave me."

Dr. June Pagaduan-Lopez, her psychiatrist, said they prepared Nicole for the face-to-face encounter and the difficulties of a trial.

"We prepared her long for this. I can see that she’s trying very hard not to react," she said in an interview.

Lopez lauded Judge Benjamin Pozon for being quick to protect the rights of the victim as guaranteed under the rape law when defense lawyers tried to attack her character.

Lopez said Nicole has been depressed since the alleged attack and was still traumatized, especially after seeing her four alleged attackers in person.

After the trial, news photographers took pictures of Nicole in violation of legal rules as well as journalism standards, prompting her lawyers to angrily threaten to sue them.

The rape charges are punishable by up to 40 years in jail. The Marines have refused to answer the charges, prompting the judge to enter a not guilty plea for them.

Muyot, a security guard at the Neptune Bar, where the incident took place at the former US Subic Bay naval base near Olongapo City, told the court that on the night of Nov. 1, he saw the woman looking drunk and unconscious and being carried on the back of a serviceman.

Pozon and prosecution lawyer Hazel Valdez asked Muyot to point out the man he saw carrying the woman.

Muyot approached and tapped the shoulder of a man who identified himself to the court as Daniel Smith.

"She’s with me and we gotta go now," Muyot quoted Smith as saying as he left the bar with the woman.

Muyot said they boarded a van parked outside the bar and he saw Smith place the woman inside the vehicle.

Prosecutors allege Lance Cpl. Smith raped the woman while the others — Lance Cpl. Keith Silkwood, Lance Cpl. Dominic Duplantis and Staff Sgt. Chad Carpentier, all members of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Force stationed on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa — cheered him on.

The soldiers have insisted that only one of them had sex with her and that the act was consensual.

Lawyers for the American defendants said their clients would be present in court for the rest of the hearings, scheduled four times a week.

The Marines had just completed counterterrorism maneuvers with Filipino troops when the alleged rape occurred.

The US Embassy has refused to turn them over to Philippine police, citing a provision under the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) that lets US authorities hold American servicemen facing a criminal case.

The US decision infuriated many, including many lawmakers, and set off small but noisy anti-US street protests, including calls for a scrapping of the VFA, a 1999 defense treaty between the Philippines and the United States.

It is also seen as a black mark on US military exercises that have been credited with helping weaken al-Qaeda-linked militants in the southern Philippines. — With AP report