Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Alleged victims plead v. ruling
SEVEN teenage school girls are asking the Cebu City Prose-cutor’s Office to reconsider its earlier ruling clearing Fr. Benedicto Ejares of any inappropriate behavior allegedly committed while hearing a confession.
They also want Assistant City Prosecutors Alexander Acosta and Fernando Gubalane to inhibit themselves from taking part in any proceedings related to their pleading.
Instead, the girls, in a motion for reconsideration filed by their lawyer Gerardo Carillo, said they want Cebu City Prosecutor Nicolas Sellon to resolve the matter.
Carillo, also a Cebu City councilor, said the statements of the victims who said they were shocked by what happened to them could not be taken lightly as a misunderstanding of Ejares’ intentions.
“It is submitted that (Ejares’) actions have caused more serious and lasting psychological and emotional trauma on the part of the complainants,” he said.
Several female third year high school students complained that Ejares touched them inappropriately when he heard their confessions during a Life in the Spirit seminar for Abellana National High School last Nov. 14.
The students are all minors.
About 20 students were reported to have been touched inappropriately by the priest, but only seven submitted sworn affidavits that became the bases of the complaints.
One student said she saw Ejares place his hands on the shoulders of the penitent ahead of her. The priest then “toyed” with a strap of the penitent’s bra.
The student said that when it was her turn to confess, Ejares did the same and even pinched and tickled her forearm.
In their ruling, Acosta and Gubalane said the statements of the complainants indicated that the priest’s action of putting his arms around their shoulders, touching their arms and backs and toying with their bra straps “was just a matter of routine or habit.”
They also said they were “not dealing here with an ordinary human being” but with someone who is considered an “alter ego of Jesus Christ.”
They also argued that it would “require an unreasonable overstretching of one’s imagination” to conclude that what Ejares did in the midst of several students and priests and in broad daylight were “meant to be lascivious and with lewd designs.”
But Carillo said the case is not about sexual abuse or lascivious conduct on the part of Ejares but about the psychological, emotional and moral effect the priest’s acts produced in the minds of his victims.
“There is no debate about the nature of the office of the priesthood. But this office is not infallible and being a creature of man must therefore stand scrutiny under the laws of mankind. The exercise of the duties of this office, whether we like it or not, has a profound effect on the spiritual, emotional and psychological well-being of its followers who are themselves citizens of the state, “ said Carillo.
Carillo also said that the evidence submitted by the National Bureau of Investigation contains all the necessary factual circumstances to charge Ejares in court. (KNT)
