‘Nicole’ was offered a settlement, says her stepsister

The stepsister of the 22-year-old Filipina who has accused four US Marines of raping her at Subic Bay Freeport last year said in court yesterday that a man had offered "Nicole" a "settlement" a day after the alleged rape.

The stepsister, who took the witness stand, said a certain Ben Natividad made the offer at the intelligence and investigation office (IIO) of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA).

She said the man told her and Nicole separately to enter into a settlement or "magpa-areglo na lang," which they both rejected.

However, she did not say if Natividad was the executive assistant of SBMA Chairman Feliciano Salonga.

The stepsister again became very emotional in narrating how they first saw Timoteo Soriano, the driver of the van where the rape allegedly happened, inside the IIO office on Nov. 2, 2005.

"I approached him and said, ‘I hope this will not happen to your children,’" she told the court in Filipino.

She said Soriano, at first, claimed that Nicole was not the girl who was with the Americans in the van on the night of Nov. 1.

Soriano later admitted that it was Nicole who was in the van, she added.

Private prosecutor Evalyn Ursua said in an interview said their act of rejecting the alleged "offer" to settle shows that the victim and her family were serious about pursuing the rape case.

"The testimony of the stepsister is proof that the victim and her family are not after the money, as rumors have been saying," she told reporters after the hearing.

"It showed that they are not interested in any kind of settlement and that they wanted justice."

Lance Corporal Keith Silkwood’s lawyer Jose Justiniano grilled the witness on details of how much the victim drank at the Neptune Bar on the night of the alleged rape.

The stepsister said there had been intervals of 10 to 15 minutes between each drink, leading Justiniano to conclude that, given such intervals, a person would not become intoxicated easily.

Justiniano also asked why the witness and the victim herself failed to stop Christopher Mills, the US Navy man who was accompanying them, from ordering more drinks despite the fact that they were supposedly already tipsy.

"I find it unusual that two persons who are already drunk did not even ask their companion to stop ordering drinks or requested that they be brought home," he told the court.