Sunday, November 04, 2007 2 minors drop case v. priest
TWO of the seven high school students who lodged the sexual harassment, child abuse and acts of lasciviousness complaint against Fr. Benedicto Ejares are no longer pursuing it.
Only five signed the affidavit of verification that their lawyers, Alvin Butch Cañares and Cebu City Councilor Gerardo Carillo, submitted to the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor last Oct. 31.
Cañares, in an interview, said the two children’s parents haven’t recovered from the initial dismissal of the charge and believe the motion for reconsideration will simply suffer the same fate.
But he said the refusal of the two original complainants to sign the affidavit of verification won’t make any difference to the validity of the motion.
“The Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor has no choice but to admit it and act on the main motion and rule on it, hopefully on the basis of the arguments and the law, and not on personal convictions,” Cañares said.
High school students at the Abellana National School underwent a Life in the Spirit seminar in November last year. Ejares was among the priests who heard the students’ confessions. Some of them later complained that he touched their arms, backs and shoulders, and toyed with their bra straps.
The prosecutor’s office dismissed the original complaint against the priest for lack of probable cause.
The “resolution upon review” signed by Assistant City Prosecutor Fernando Gubalane and Nicolas Sellon indicated, among other things, that the place where the alleged lascivious conduct happened was a public and not a private place—an essential element of the crime.
In their resolution, the two also said that priests become the alter ego of Jesus Christ during confession and that “it would require an unreasonable overstretching of one’s imagination” to conclude that the priest’s acts were done with “lewd designs.”
Cañares, acting on the girls’ behalf, filed a motion for reconsideration.
He pointed out that the acts of lasciviousness complaint was anchored on the Anti-Child Abuse Law—where the effect of the incident on the psychological development of the child, not the criminal intent on the part of the priest, is more important.
Sellon dismissed the motion on the basis of a “procedural defect”—the absence of an affidavit of verification—but gave the lawyer seven days upon receipt to submit one.
He dismissed a motion for inhibition targeting Acosta and Gubalane, saying it wasn’t “anchored on just and valid grounds” but indicated anyway that he will now be the one solely handling the case.
Gubalane, before the motion for reconsideration could be filed, defended his findings in the original resolution upon review.
He said no proof was attached to the complaint to show that the children were psychologically affected by the incident.
So although the point wasn’t raised in the actual findings, Cañares indicated they will submit transcripts of interviews that Department of Social Welfare and Development 7 social workers had with the complaining teenagers.
The transcripts will then be evaluated by psychologists.
In the meantime, Cañares said he hopes the transcripts will have more weight than the prosecutors’ concept that priests are the alter ego of Jesus Christ and, thus, can do no wrong. (KNR)
