Uneasy feeling on Subic rape case

GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc The Philippine Star

The rallies at the embassy aim for anti-US tension, which is why only few join. Filipinos are trusting of America, they have relatives in America, many of them wish to live in America. Still, if newspaper editorials are to be a gauge, there is growing unease about the handling of the gang rape at Subic by six US Marines. And it’s all because of actions – or lack of it – of RP and US officials.

For one, there’s the galling phone call leaked by Katrina Legarda, the victim’s counsel. Says she, on the early morning after the girl was shoved out of the Marines’ van naked and crying, embassy men swayed Justice Sec. Raul Gonzalez to turn over the suspects to them. Gonzalez denies the story. Yet it’s the only explanation by far for the Ologanpo city fiscal’s failure to hold an inquest right away, and for the police to make arrests. They could have been napping on the job, though, which then justifies Legarda’s plea for case transfer to Manila. But Gonzalez nixes that too by saying the fiscal is on the ball. Through it all, US officials have not elucidated how the six servicemen came to be safely in their hands.

The only words from the embassy have been either provocative or tentative. There was the brute that hooted at women picketing the embassy that the victim got what she deserved for riding a van full of strangers. And there’s the line that the legation took custody of the six precisely to present them to RP court if ever, instead of letting them board ship that left on the night of the alleged felony. That only sent senators rereading the Visiting Forces Agreement that they had ratified only recently, and discovering its many flaws and breaches. By provision, the US side should have made a formal request for custody, which it did not, so the issue resurfaces on how the Marines got off Subic hands. By provision, too, RP may seek charge of the accused, if only to ensure court jurisdiction. Only after senators grilled the VFA Commission chief and the Foreign Undersecretary for special concerns did the latter deem it proper to formally inform the US of RP’s desire for custody.

That again is iffy. A history of sad-happy relations makes Filipinos wary of US intents for justice in military offenses. When the US held naval and air bases in Subic Bay and Clark Field for decades, sentries on several occasions had shot Negritoes scavenging in garbage dumps. The invariable verdict was, so sorry, we mistook them for wild boar. The Olongapo fiscal’s office admits that all 30 or so rape cases against US servicemen back then had been dismissed or settled out of court. In one instance, then-Olongapo mayor (now senator) Dick Gordon had to chase a US Navy sergeant all the way to Hawaii for custody – in vain – for the rape of a ten-year-old girl. For Filipinos old enough to remember such events before the bases left in 1991, the outcome of this present rape case is predictably dim.

It has yet to be seen if US policy had since changed. Filipinos in touch with relatives in America are receiving grim messages. Fil-Ams caution that the US, perennially at war all over the world, routinely welcomes back as heroes soldier-boys who may have committed murder, torture or rape. Sometimes a war vet is haunted by conscience, flips, and goes on a shooting spree in a post office – and only then would his war crimes be investigated. Oftentimes the offended parties are forgotten as "consequent casualties of war". Only when the US press uncovers stinks, such as the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, sexual abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib, and torment at Guantanamo prison camp, do the White House and Pentagon act with dispatch. In the Subid rape case, Fil-Am lawyer Rodel Rodis notes, only two newspapers in the Midwest carried the story. He asks in his weekly column why those in California or New York, where there are huge Filipino concentrations, had ignored it for days.

The rape report and custody issue broke on the same week that a US functionary flew in to chide Manila about its dismal record against human trafficking. That should have assured Filipinos somehow that the US would not countenance abuse, if true, in Subic. But it didn’t. For, that week too US president George W. Bush was in Panama proclaiming that, yes, he would veto a bill to outlaw torture by US soldiers but, no, "we do not torture." Vice president Dick Cheney also was lobbying on Capitol Hill to exclude spies from any torture ban. A week before, the defense chief flatly denied a Washington Post exposé of CIA torture in secret prisons in Asia and Eastern Europe – although of course he could not confirm that such prisons existed. The farce does not escape local attention. Months back the State department again listed the Philippines as a bad place for human rights. Yet about the same time, the US justice department issued a memo justifying torture as among a US president’s war powers. Simultaneously the Pentagon declared too that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to battles against terrorists or sympathizers. Rape can be a type of torture. So the US pronouncements somehow bear on the Subic case. To add to the irony, the bill that Bush was so vehement against seeks only to correct uncovered abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Afghanistan. It was filed by Bush’s Republican pal, Sen. John McCain, himself tortured in Vietnam, but who says that the technique is nearly always useless since people will admit anything to tormentors. All McCain wants is to set US records and standards right by prohibiting cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment or punishment of US military captives.

A last reason for Filipinos’ skepticism about the Subic rap prospering is their own spotty justice system. The VFA sets one year to resolve any case involving US servicemen. The deadline surely won’t be met. It would take 60 days for preliminary investigation alone. Then, 15 days for appeals, 15 days for the other side to answer, and 60 days for the justice department to rule any which way. After that, 30 more days to file a motion to quash, plus another 30 days to file a motion for reconsideration, and the customary 60 days for the department to make a final ruling. By the time the case reaches court, only three months remain. But pre-trial starts only 30 days after arraignment, and that too takes another 30 days. The leaves only one month for prosecution and defense to make their cases before time’s up

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Olongapo folk view rape case with mixed feelings

By Tonette Orejas, Inquirer News Service

Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the Nov. 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

OLONGAPO CITY, Zambales -- A woman who was abused twice by American sailors says Olongapo is not a kind venue for the 22-year-old Filipino woman seeking justice after allegedly being gang-raped by six US Marines.

The 46-year-old woman said city residents could neither wholly offer sympathy nor objectively relate to the Nov. 1 rape incident in the Subic Bay Freeport at the conclusion of the RP-US counterterrorism exercises.

"People here have mixed thoughts on the case," said Minda, not her real name.

"Surely, there would be sympathies for the woman because she's a Filipino, but you can't expect all of them to give her moral support because many depended on the base for a living for a long, long time," she told the Inquirer in an interview at her house in a slum area in Banicain here.

The preliminary investigation of the case has been set for Nov. 23.

Yesterday, Assistant Prosecutor Raymond Viray said one of the Americans, Albert Lara, had filed a motion to confront Timoteo Soriano Jr., the driver of the van where the alleged gang-rape took place. He said there was no need to approve the motion since the confrontation would take place on Nov. 23.

For almost a century, Subic Naval Base -- the largest American facility outside the continental United States -- was the home of the US Seventh Fleet.

"When the base and the soldiers were here, even vendors of cigarettes and roses managed to send their children to college," said Evelyn Merza, 40, explaining the local bias for Americans.

In 1992, the base was shut down and was turned over to the Philippine government, which transformed it into a freeport, a river away from where Minda and other fishing families live.

Confused

Mayor James Gordon Jr. said a "large percentage" of Olongapo residents liked the Americans owing to the big international business community in the city.

But Gordon said he also sensed his people to be having "mixed feelings or are now confused" about the Nov. 1 rape that has sparked almost daily anti-American protests in Manila and calls for the scuttling of the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

He said this was because neither the complainant nor the accused had directly spoken to the media about the incident.

Olongapo residents, Gordon said, should consider the suspects innocent until a court had proven them guilty.

He said the bigger worry was the incident could be bad for businessmen. "They fear that no more ships would dock in Subic as a result of the incident," the mayor said.

Soldiers on "liberty," or rest and recreation, spend money on food and drinks, gift items, tours and a "good time" or night-out in clubs.

Former US Navyman Jim Correll said almost 3,000 retired American servicemen lived in the city but none of them had so far organized actions to express sympathy for the six American suspects.

"I feel for the soldiers involved. There's an ongoing investigation, but the issue has been constantly discussed by us, expatriates," Correll told the Inquirer on Friday night.

Correll said the US government had not violated the VFA "because lots are at stake, including defense cooperation, at a time of world terrorism."

No legal hold

Minda said the ambivalence, if not the apathy, displayed by the residents toward the woman could be rooted in their feelings of numbness.

"A lot of rape cases had happened here during the base years but erring soldiers were taken away or the complainants opted to settle after being given money even before the cases were filed," she said.

Minda was an 18-year-old freshman college student and runaway when the first abuse happened. She was working in a bar when the second incident occurred.

In the second case, she said the police castigated her, telling her that sex workers had "no right" to complain of sexual abuse since they had chosen that kind of job.

In either of the cases, she did not go to court.

"The OPM (Office of the Provost Marshall) and the police were unsympathetic to women complaining of rape," she said.

Perla Ramos of Barangay Mabayuan recalled that her friend Sylvia, a bar worker from Pampanga province, backed off from seeking police help when one of them made sex a condition for their assistance in a rape case.

Esperanza del Rosario, who has worked at the city prosecutor's office for 30 years as a stenographer, confirmed that local authorities lost their handle on suspects when base officials issued the waiver of primary rights of jurisdiction.

This, Del Rosario said, voided any request of the prosecutor for a "legal hold" on the suspect.

Back then, a legal hold meant that the suspect would not be allowed to leave the city or board his ship during the preliminary investigation.

Or even if they were held, trial and conviction were conducted by a court-martial overseas, as in the cases of Randall Glen Harris in 1984 and Daniel Doherty in 1982, court documents showed.

Racket

Legal hold was also a scheme by US soldiers who wanted to stay longer in the Philippines for the "good time" that rest and recreations havens like Olongapo City offered, according to a city official.

It was done in connivance with their girlfriends who cried rape or physical injuries.

At times, according to the official, charges were trumped up to wring money out of soldiers.

But whether or not the charges were true, the official said the naval intelligence service acted fast.

"They had Filipino lawyers who convinced the victims, their families or witnesses to settle the cases out of court or through evidence that really proved the innocence of the suspects," the official said.

It was no wonder that only a few cases reached the courts. Records from the city prosecutor's office showed that only 29 rape cases had been filed against US servicemen from 1986 to 1992. At least 22 cases were dismissed after preliminary investigation and only seven were filed in court.

In post-bases years, from 1993 to 2005, the prosecutor's office received 277 rape complaints against Filipinos. Of these, 100 were dismissed after preliminary investigation, 148 proceeded to court for trial while 29 were referred to other offices like the Department of Social Welfare and Development in cases where minors were involved.

This backdrop has unsettled Katrina Legarda, the lawyer of the Zamboanga City woman, who asked that the case be transferred to the Department of Justice in Manila.

Prosecutor Prudencio Jalandoni, who has served at his post since 1992, said the track record of his office showed no bias for or against American suspects.

"Everything rested on evidence," he said.

The lack of evidence, not the improper conduct of prosecutors or judges, was the main reason cases did not prosper.

"Definitely, she will get a fair hearing," said Jalandoni.

Minda said she could not blame the woman or her lawyer for wanting to move the case out of Olongapo.

"I learned the victim is not a bar worker, but here abused women don't get much justice," she said.