Witness: Subic rape victim begged attackers to stop

A witness in the trial of four US Marines accused of raping a Filipina testified yesterday he was told by the victim that she pleaded for them to stop but that her alleged attackers did not listen to her pleas.

"Sabi ko sa kanila, tama na... pero sige pa rin sila (I told them to stop it already, but they went on with it)," were the woman’s exact words, according to the testimony of Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SMBA) law enforcer Noel Paule, who took the witness stand for the prosecution yesterday.

Paule, a bike patrol officer, said he found the woman in a parking lot near the Telecoms Building along Waterfront Road at the Subic Freeport Zone at around 12:15 a.m. on Nov. 2 last year.

He said he was patrolling the area when he saw a woman, crying and apparently drunk, who was being attended to by about eight other people.

When he asked the people attending to the woman what was wrong, Paule said the men told him that the woman claimed to have been molested by US servicemen.

When he came closer and tried to talk to her, Paule said the woman embraced him and asked him not to leave her.

"Dito ka lang, huwag mo kong iwan. Pag nalaman ito ng mama ko, papatayin niya ako (Stay here, don’t leave me. If my mama finds out, she will kill me)," Paule said, quoting the victim who is being identified only as "Nicole."

Paule said the woman repeated these words at least three times, and that she also said she tried to tell "them" to stop but "they" didn’t listen to her.

Based on the prosecution’s fourth witness, presented last Thursday, the driver of the van heard Lance Corporal Daniel Smith’s companions cheer him on with the words, "Go, Smith, go!"

Joseph Khongghun, a businessman who testified in court last Thursday, said van driver Timoteo Soriano told him about the cheering during the investigation of the incident.

Khongghun told the court that he saw three of the men carry a disoriented, half-naked woman out of a van at a former US naval base in Subic.

He said the three men, one black and two white, left the woman on the sidewalk on the evening of Nov. 1 and then ran toward a US warship docked at a pier. The van was also driven away.

Khongghun, asked to identify the men, walked to where Lance Corporals Dominic Duplantis, Smith and Keith Silkwood were seated, then tapped them on their shoulders.

Khongghun also identified the woman complainant as the same woman he saw left on the sidewalk.

The prosecution, during the direct examination of their fifth witness in the fifth day of marathon hearings on the Subic rape case, asked Paule to identify the woman he had seen in open court.

Paule then approached the alleged victim, who was seated third from the last seat of the first row of the gallery wearing dark glasses.

The three accused, as well as Chad Carpentier, sat behind their lawyers in seats fronting the gallery.