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Monday, December 19, 2005
Embarrassing a woman in public hurts 2 City workers
A COUPLE working as casual employees at Cebu City Hall were ordered suspended by the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas for shaming a woman in front of several people.
The anti-graft office suspended the wife for one month, but ordered the husband suspended for six months for laying a hand on the “hapless” complainant.
Graft Investigator Allan Francisco Garciano gave more weight to the statement of Christine Colina Rodriguez that Lomelie Jurado and husband Joel “emotionally and physically hurt her” inside the City Transport Services (CTRAS) office last April.
The decision, penned last Sept. 22, was approved by Deputy Ombudsman Primo Miro.
The Cebu City Council received its copy of the decision last week.
The ombudsman told Mayor Tomas Osmeña to implement the administrative sanctions last month, when the Jurados failed to file a motion for reconsideration.
Lomelie works at the Cebu City Women and Family Affairs Commission, while Joel is with CTRAS.
Rodriguez, on the other hand, works as a Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) employee detailed as Alcantara, Cebu’s acting municipal local government operations officer.
Rodriguez said she went to City Hall last April 7 to learn how to draft a memorandum of agreement (MOA), after Alcantara Mayor Benlo Lobitaña asked her to assist in writing a MOA for a Japanese government-sponsored project.
She added that she was inside the CTRAS office around 10:30 a.m. after using its phone when Lomelie arrived and shouted at her.
Triangle
Lomelie allegedly accused Rodriguez of being her husband’s lover and said that she kept going to City Hall even after having been transferred.
CTRAS head Arcadio Oberes and assistant Petronilo Fat testified that they saw the incident.
Rodriguez denied the allegation and said that despite being publicly humiliated, she told Lomelie to ask her husband, who was outside, to be man enough and tell the truth.
At that point, Joel went inside the office and “without the slightest provocation,” slapped the back of her head and the left cheek.
In his affidavit, Joel said Rodriguez’s allegations stemmed from her “hate and anger on account of his obvious attempts to avoid her.”
Lomelie also said that although her husband had ended his supposed affair with Rodriguez, the complainant still kept on trying to get in touch with him, hence her presence at the CTRAS office.
She said that when she saw Rodriguez, she approached and told her to stop bothering her husband. But Rodriguez told Lomelie that Joel is stupid.
‘Helpless’
It was then that Joel, she said, entered the office and warded off Rodriguez’s finger that she kept pointing at Lomelie’s face.
Rodriguez allegedly responded by slapping him on the nape.
In deciding on the complaint, Garciano said he was “morally convinced” that Rodriguez’s allegations were true, as corroborated by both Oberes and Fat.
Lomelie was suspended for only a month because what she did “appeared to have been committed under the influence of jealousy and passion.”
Joel’s penalty, however, was heavier because he physically hurt and further humiliated Rodriguez as a result.
“The contemptuous act of Joel...(was) something that a real man should not do to a helpless woman,” the decision read. (RHM)
(December 19, 2005 issue)
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