The Office of the Ombudsman in Mindanao has ordered the dismissal of a punong barangay in Cagayan de Oro City after he was being found liable for grave misconduct due to rape.
In a press statement, the OMB-MIN decision led by Deputy Ombudsman Rodolfo Elman found substantive evidence to hold Barangay Captain Achilles Jude Babaran liable for grave misconduct on Feb. 13.
The girl had accused Babaran of raping her on two occasions in 2015.
The case stemmed from the complaint of a 15-year-old girl, whose name cannot be published because she is a minor, who claimed that while she was attending a youth meeting in a barangay hall in Pagatpat, Cagayan de Oro City, Babaran invited her to join him on June 19, 2015, and that the incident was repeated on 22 September 2015, this time inside a hotel where Babaran brought her.
The girl said that Babaran had “threatened her not to tell her parents, otherwise, he will deny them from [staying in] the relocation site where they are residing.”
Elman, citing the Supreme Court case, said that a victim of rape will not come out in the open and make public the offense committed on her, undergo the agony and humiliation of a public trial and endure the ordeal of testifying on all the sordid details of the crime, if she had not in fact been raped, and if her motive was not to obtain justice and her testimony as to who abused her is not the truth.
“Thus, when a woman, more so if she be a minor, says that she has been raped, she says in effect all that is necessary to show that rape was committed, and if her testimony meets the test of credibility, the accused may be convicted solely on the basis thereof,” Elman added, still citing the Supreme Court case.
