Defective charges

The real nature of the criminal charge is determined not from the caption or preamble of the Information nor from the specification of the provision of law alleged to have been violated but from the recital of facts as alleged in the body of the Information. This is the ruling applied in this case of Tonyo which enabled him to escape the death penalty for the crime he committed.

Tonyo is married to Rita with whom he has six children: Tanya, Pete, Dina, Jenny, Pablo and Andy. The family resides in a two-story house located at a Visayan town with three bedrooms, one in the second floor and two on the ground floor. Tanya, the eldest is the most attractive among the sisters and has many suitors which Tonyo did not approve of. Thus he always beats up Tanya and when she was chosen as the Barangay’s Reyna Elena with one of her suitors, Lando as consort, Tonyo even got madder at her. On several occasions Tonyo would even remove Tanya’s clothes and measured her breast and vagina. When she told her mother Rita about Tonyo’s perversion, the latter confronted Tonyo who neither confirmed nor denied it. So Tanya left their home twice when she was still in the elementary school.

One evening when the family was all at home already, Tanya went to sleep scantily clad in shorts and sleeveless blouse on a wooden bed in one of the rooms on the ground floor which she occupies together with her two sisters who were already asleep by then. At about midnight when she tried to turn to her left but could not do so, she woke up and saw her father Tonyo tying her right hand to the bedpost. She could only manage to say “Tay” as Tonyo immediately stuffed her mouth before she could even ask why he was doing that to her. Then after tying Tanya’s right leg to the bedpost, turning off the lights and delivering fist blows on her daughter Tonyo succeeded in penetrating Tanya despite her struggle. As Tanya bled and cried on her first sexual congress, Tonyo warned her mother or friends about the incident.

The following day, when Tonyo had left, she already told her mother Rita about what her father did to her. At first, Rita went inside her room but later on came out smiling and would not believe Tanya’s story. Hence after the rape, Tonyo molested Tanya again three times in her room. He even hurt her on her birthday touching her thigh, breast and private parts and told her not to leave the house.

The following month when her cousin Evelyn started living with them and finding out that she could be trusted, Tanya told Evelyn that her father sexually abused her but her mother and even her sisters refused to believe her harrowing tale and just advised her to keep it to herself to avoid further beatings.

Two months after the rape, Tanya already ran away from home and sought the help of her best friend Ellen. Eventually after staying in the house of Ellen’s first cousin, and later in Ellen’s sister’s (Linda’s) house, Ellen was able to bring Tanya to her best friend and policeman SPO2 Sevilla who brought her to a doctor for examination. And when the findings showed that Tanya was no longer a virgin, she was taken to the Barangay Captain and the police station where she filed a complaint for rape. Then she started living at the DSWD as her father was already looking for her.

At the trial Tanya testified and narrated what her father did to her and the various emotions and feelings she had because of her traumatic experience. Ellen, Linda, the municipal social worker, the medico legal officer also testified to narrate their respective roles in the incidents.

For his defense, Tonyo denied Tanya’s complaint of rape. He said that on the night in question he slept at the sala with his wife and two sons at about 9 p.m. and woke up at 4 a.m. the next morning. He likewise denied touching Tanya’s private parts and peeping at her although he admitted beating her up sometimes because she refused to go to school. His wife Rita and two daughters also testified to corroborate Tonyo’s defense.

The trial court however gave credence to the honest, frank, clear and convincing version of the prosecution witnesses and found Tonyo guilty of raping her minor daughter and sentenced him to death in accord with Article 335 of the Revised Penal Code as amended by RA 7659 re-imposing the death penalty. He was also ordered to pay Tanya P50,000 indemnity plus cost of suit.

On automatic review, the Supreme Court (SC) affirmed the trial court’s decision convicting Tonyo of rape. The SC ruled that the inconsistencies in Tanya’s testimony and in her conduct are all but minor and tend to bolster rather than weaken her credibility. It is understandable that Tanya would not remember the minor details of her forced sexual congress considering how traumatic and harrowing it was.

But the SC said that to characterize rape as heinous and to justify the imposition of death penalty, the concurrence of the minority of the victim and her relationship to the offender, as a single special aggravating circumstance, must be alleged. The accused would be denied of his right to be informed of the charges against him and thus of due process, if he is charged with simple rape but convicted of its qualified form punishable by death although the attendant circumstances qualifying the offense and the imposition of the death penalty, were not alleged in the information. Considering that the special aggravating circumstances of relationship and minority were not properly alleged in the Information, and Tanya’s age was not proved, the penalty should be reduced to reclusion perpetua plus P50,000 civil indemnity, P50,000 moral damages and P25,000 exemplary damages (People vs. Rodriguez, G.R. 138987, February 6, 2002)

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