Palace backtracks on rape of narc’s daughter
MANILA, Philippines—Malacaņang on Tuesday made a surprise turnaround and claimed the reported rape of the daughter of an antinarcotics agent by a drugs gang was “unverified”—a day after the Palace denounced the incident as “a vile crime of rape” and declared war on drug traffickers.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported the incident on Monday based on an on-the-record phone interview with Director General Dionisio Santiago of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).
Santiago later asked the Inquirer not to publish the story, saying he was trying to convince the girl’s father to go to the media. Understandably, the father has refused to talk publicly about the matter.
But concerned with the public’s right to know about a story imbued with public interest, Inquirer editors published it but withheld the names of the girl and her father to protect their privacy, in accordance with the law involving violence against women and minors and owing to the sensitivity of the matter.
Also Tuesday, the PDEA chief, Santiago, told reporters after a House oversight committee hearing that fears that the girl had been kidnapped arose because her parents panicked when she failed to come home early after attending school on Saturday.
According to Santiago, the parents had become apprehensive because there was a previous attempt to kidnap the girl.
“There was an attempt before to get the daughter of one of our agents and this second time around, the wife panicked because the child had not come home,” Santiago said.
“Very sketchy reports reached the father. Maybe the father came to the conclusion that it was another incident related to the original [attempt].”
Santiago said the father, who has remained unidentified up to now, was not convinced that nothing bad had happened to his child until the medico-legal report came out showing she was not raped.
As it turned out, Santiago said, the young girl had had a drinking spree with friends and passed out. Her friends later brought her home, introducing themselves as the girl’s classmates.
Santiago defended the investigative skills of Chief Supt. Orlando Pestaņo, Cordillera regional police director, who has said that there was no rape or abduction.
He said Pestaņo had interviewed the classmates of the girl and was a seasoned officer who knew how to detect who was lying or not. Pestaņo also used to be with the PDEA and was sympathetic to the agency, he said.
Pestaņo the other day cited a medical report showing the girl was “negative for sperm identification.”