MANILA, Philippines – A Philippine court has sentenced a father
to 14,400 years in prison after he was convicted of the near daily
rape of his teenage daughter over the course of a year.
A trial court originally condemned the man, a rickshaw driver,
to die in March 2006 after he was convicted of 360 counts of rape _
allegedly carried out during the year his wife worked in Hong
Kong.
But the Court of Appeals in Manila commuted the sentence to 40
years for each count, according to a court decision obtained
Friday. The defendant can still appeal to the Supreme Court. It was
not clear if he would.
The then-13-year-old victim, now 22, said her ordeal began in
January 2001, when her mother left for work in Hong Kong as a
domestic helper and left her three children with their father in
Los Banos, a township just south of Manila.
She said he forced her to have intercourse with him almost every
day, except when she had her period or on holidays, when he would
make her perform oral sex.
The ordeal only ended after she and her siblings spent a
vacation with their mother's relatives. Reluctant to return to her
father at the end of the vacation, she broke down and told her
family about the abuse. Her mother returned home from Hong Kong and
helped her file the case.
The appeals court affirmed the lower court's dismissal of the
defense's contention that the man's wife made up the allegations to
get custody of the children and marry a foreigner.
-- AP
