Thursday, January 25, 2007 Fiscal to testify on ‘harassment’
PROVINCIAL Prosecutor Jane Petralba will testify for the ex-fiscal who lodged a sexual harassment complaint before the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor last Tuesday.
In an interview at her office yesterday, Petralba confirmed being with the ex-prosecutor in November 2005 and having read the lewd text messages that the respondent, an executive of the National Transmission Corp. (Transco), sent.
A separate civil suit is being prepared against other Transco officials for not acting on an earlier internal complaint that the prosecutor filed. And Petralba said she is willing to testify in that venue too.
Republic Act 7877 of the Anti-Sexual Harassment Act of 1995 states in Section 5 that the employer, head of office or the educational or training institution will be held “solidarily liable for damages arising from the acts of sexual harassment” if they were informed by the offended party but failed to act on it.
The criminal sexual harassment complaint, filed with the help of the nongovernment group Legal Alternatives for Women Inc., is now with Assistant City Prosecutor Daphne Deguma.
“She was driving me home after dinner and I noticed her mobile phone kept ringing. I asked her why she wouldn’t answer it.
She said to let it be. Then, when we reached home, she asked if she could show me something. I said yes and she let me read a message he sent,” Petralba said.
She said the former prosecutor was visibly affected by it.
“I didn’t know that there had been others,” Petralba said.
The incident happened after a dinner held for the respondent who, together with a lawyer Ulpiano Campos Jr., was in Cebu to hold interviews for applicants for the Transco post of corporate attorney 2.
The complainant was one of the guests in that dinner. Petralba was likewise present.
After the dinner, the party was supposed to move to a resto-bar but new guests arrived and the respondent opted to stay behind.
The complainant said she inquired through text message if the respondent planned to catch up with them, but the respondent allegedly replied that what he wanted was “(to) be in bed” with her.
“In retrospect, I realized that the text message was just a culmination of past incidents that had already made me uncomfortable,” she said.
She said she began avoiding the official but her efforts to distance herself from the respondent cost her a regular appointment as the Transco regional legal counsel for the Visayas.
She accused the respondent of blocking her application for promotion. (KNR)
