Nurses seek justice for gang-rape victim

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine Nurses Association (PNA) yesterday embarked on a weeklong protest to condemn the gang-rape of a 21-year-old volunteer nurse in Maguindanao recently.

PNA members kicked off the mass action by wearing black armbands to dramatize the demand for justice for the victim, who was abused by a group of young men, some of whom reportedly belong to influential families in Maguindanao.

“We’ll be doing this for one week. We ask President Aquino to ensure that justice will be served to our nurse,” said PNA president Teresita Barcelo.

The victim has been serving in South Upi in Maguindanao as a volunteer nurse under the NARS (Nurses Assigned in Rural Areas) program, which dispatches nurses to serve in far-flung communities. Volunteers are only paid a stipend and have to serve for six months.

According to Barcelo, they would also hold a “walk for justice” tomorrow from the PNA office in F. Benitez Street in Malate, Manila to Mendiola to seek an audience with President Aquino.

“We hope that authorities will not slow down in this case. We demand justice for the victim,” she said. 

Meantime, policemen arrested yesterday a former militiaman who was tagged as one of at least five “real culprits” in the rape case.

South Upi Mayor Abdullah Campong, chair of the municipal peace and order council, said the suspect, Boy Beling, an ethnic Teduray, already confessed to raping the nurse.

”Witnesses have pointed to him as the mastermind of that gang-rape that caused our municipality embarrassment,” Campong said.

Campong said Beling, a former member of the Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU), is a contractual worker of a Korean construction firm that is building a highway linking South Upi to Lebak, Sultan Kudarat.

The rape victim is still undergoing treatment at a hospital in Cotabato.

Her molesters bashed her head with stones before they left her naked and unconscious in an open field near the South Upi municipal hospital.

The victim’s head injuries left half of her body paralyzed, according to physician Tahir Sulaik, chief of the Maguindanao Integrated Provincial Health Office.

Rey Insular, owner of the videoke pub where the nurse was seen whiling away time before she was found unconscious the next day, said the six suspects arrested earlier were all fall guys.

“They were friends of the victim who were among the first to respond when they learned that she disappeared. In fact, it was them who found her already in a very bad condition,” Insular said.

Campong said local officials are now helping the police locate the whereabouts of the other suspects that witnesses positively tagged as members of the group that raped the nurse.   With John Unson