Judge Librado Correa, of Branch 183, found the accused guilty of four counts of rape. He was ordered to pay his daughter some P200,000 in damages. The judge also sentenced the father to an eight-year prison term for physically injuring another daughter, aged two years old.
The STAR decided to withhold the full name of the accused to protect his daughters, both minors.
In a six-page decision, the court ruled that the evidence presented by the defense panel was outweighed by the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses.
Court records showed that the father first raped his daughter on July 5, 1999 when he arrived home drunk and found her sleeping on the couch. After the sexual assault, the father threatened the victim to keep her silence about the incident or get killed.
The rape was repeated several times until Nov. 15 when the father sold his daughter to one Willie Toledo who is facing a separate rape case. On Nov. 23, the accused tried to pimp his daughter again but the latter hid in the room of her two-year-old sister.
Upon learning of this, the father vented his ire on his younger child whom he beat up with a wooden broom. The girl landed in the hospital, prompting her older sibling to reveal her ordeal to their relatives. – Sheila Crisostomo