Will kidnap victims still go to court?

It’s not for laymen to judge but only to watch. And they watched in shock as Dennis Roldan, the former actor-congressman accused of leading the kidnapping of a three-year-old boy, was allowed bail last week.

Teresita Ang See, ubiquitous head of the Citizens’ Action Against Crime, expressed the common outrage: "It will now be difficult to convince victims to file cases against kidnappers. We see that, in a solid case like this, the mastermind can still go out on bail."

The bail was totally unexpected, given the evidence and testimonies to condemn Roldan after yearlong bail hearings. Prosecutors presented ten witnesses. Four policemen recounted his admission during interrogation that mistress Suzette Wang had egged him to abduct her best friend’s son. Three other cops swore to seeing him going in and out of the hideout where gang mates had brought the boy in Feb. 2005. They even showed video clips of him being staked out, Ang See said.

The boy’s mom also recounted negotiating down the ransom to P3 million from P250 million, "the biggest ever" Ang See has heard in studying kidnappings of Chinese-Filipinos for a decade. The mom also said she had lost her cell phone and was still rebuilding the directory in a replacement unit, so few people knew her new number in Feb. 2005, yet Roldan sent her messages for ransom. In subsequent taped conversations, Roldan detailed to the mom the businesses and pieces of property he knew she could raise the ransom from. Such information could only have been extracted through Wang, her classmate since nursery school and the traumatized victim’s godmother. Prosecutors presented the cell phone and SIM card taken from Roldan when arrested at his house.

The victim’s nanny, who wouldn’t let go of the boy when the kidnappers struck, and was thus also taken, swore seeing Wang and Roldan in the backup car. The tenth to testify was none other than a co-accused who turned state witness. Alberto Pagdanganan said he met Roldan through the latter’s best friend Octavio Garces, also an accused. Roldan, he said, gave him instructions and money to rent the hideout, where the police eventually rescued the boy and arrested six kidnappers, except Roldan and Wang, who has managed to flee the country.

The defense never presented Roldan to refute the charges. They put up two of the co-accused, who claimed they had never met Roldan until they came to court. If at all, they corroborated Roldan’s line of not knowing them either.

Pasig regional court Judge Agnes Reyes-Carpio granted Roldan’s release on P500,000-bond after finding the evidence weak. Kidnapping is a no-bail offense, but an accused can seek bail depending on the magistrate’s appreciation of initial evidence. In this case, Roldan sought the bail hearing before the trial on the merits, which will commence next week.

The strategy worked. Judge Reyes-Carpio wrote: "The court believes that, at this stage, the aggregate of evidence so far presented by the prosecution is not strong to prove the complicity of (Roldan) in the subject offense. For the police who built up the case, this simply meant they have to tighten more evidence against Roldan as mastermind.

But Ang See, who observes kidnapping trials for CAAC and the Movement for Restoration of Peace and Order, gnashed her teeth at the judge’s reasoning. Reyes-Carpio had said the pieces of evidence, like the video clips, were not authenticated; Roldan’s voice in the audio recordings needed expert verification; and his cell phone should have been reactivated instead of simply presented with transcripts of the ransom messages. "Yet it was she who, at the start of the bail hearings, dispensed with the formalities of evidence presentation, including markings," Ang See cried in frustration. "It was she who suggested those rules could wait till the main trial. It was she who said she has heard enough evidence."

The judge also said Pagdanganan’s narrative had no corroboration and the policemen’s testimonies were self-serving. To which Ang See, who has followed the case from Day 1, raised her eyebrows: "Many influential persons reportedly tried to bribe the investigators to weaken the evidence buildup, yet they turned it down. So how can they be self-serving now?" Anti-kidnapping sleuths had heard Roldan’s name in three previous kidnappings but couldn’t find evidence to link him – until this boy’s abduction last year.

Dante Jimenez of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption added: "The judge committed a very grave error in judgment, considering the testimonies of witnesses who pointed to Roldan as a direct participant in the kidnapping." Notably, three of the five co-accused, including buddy Garces, had used the same claims as Roldan’s in their own petitions for bail – yet were denied by the judge.

Roldan’s lawyers assure that he will not flee the country as Wang did. The P500,000-bond attaches several pieces of family property. For his part, Roldan says he will become a pastor from now on, having "seen the light" from a year in detention. "I will start (preaching) with my family, then I will reach out to my neighbors," he told reporters upon exiting jail. He might want to praise and thank Judge Reyes-Carpio as well.

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