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Saturday, September 18, 2004
Pa meted 26 death penalties for rape of daughters
By Giovanni A. Nilles
CEBU CITY -- A seaman was sentenced to die 26 times by lethal injection for raping his teenage twin daughters in 1998.
This is the first time that a Cebu City Regional Trial Court imposed such heavy penalty for the heinous crime of incestuous rape.
Reynaldo Andus, who is in his mid-40s, could only say "lisura" (so difficult) while the 37-page decision of Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 15 Judge Fortunato de Gracia Jr. was being read Friday.
De Gracia also ordered Andus to pay the twins P295,000 in civil indemnity and damages.
The overseas ship chief mate, however, was acquitted in five of the 31 counts of rape that his daughters, now age 24, heaped against him.
While the ruling was for multiple death sentences, or one for each count of rape, there is only one execution if the RTC decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, where the case goes on automatic review.
The rape charges were originally filed before the Regional Trial Court in Toledo City.
Judge de Gracia expressed admiration for the twins' "sincere and straightforward" delivery of their testimonies, although they seemed on the verge of an emotional breakdown.
The twins, who have requested anonymity, were Andus' children with wife Teresita Baclayon.
Andus and Baclayon's marriage was annulled in court and custody of the twins was given to the mother.
But in March 1998, the twins started living with their father in his provincial residence.
At that time, their father was on vacation and had just separated from his second wife with whom he has two sons, aged nine and 11.
The court's decision stated that Andus and his four children slept in one room and on the same bed.
The sisters said that when their half brothers were already asleep, Andus threatened them with a hunting knife or a gun if they did not grant him sexual favors.
They said the abuses continued because they were not able to resist for fear that Andus would make good his threat to kill them, their brothers and their mother Teresita.
Fear also made them stay in the same room despite their father's sexual assaults.
Baclayon told the court that she allowed the twins to live with their father "in order to alleviate" his hurt feelings after the separation with his second wife.
Andus denied the charge. He said he could not have abused his children because they are the flesh of his flesh.
Apart from this, he was busy following up his next overseas assignment and business pursuits in the country.
Besides, he said, he had plenty of girlfriends who were willing to have sex with him.
He told the court that Baclayon convinced his daughters to make up the charges to prevent him from marrying for the third time.
Baclayon reportedly wanted to live with him again after his separation with the second wife and had been harassing his future wife by calling him for days before the wedding.
But de Gracia refused to give credence to Andus' statements, which he described as "petty".
"The court cannot believe that (because) of a disapproval of an intended marriage by their own father, these young women would submit themselves to ignominy, untold humiliation and embarrassing ordeal of a public trial, subject their private parts to examination and, maybe, foreclose the probability of a blissful marriage," his ruling read.
The court said that it did not believe Andus, even while he proudly narrated his various love trysts.
"Far from appeasing the smoldering embers in his loins, the variety of partners only served as an unfailing aperitif that whetted his appetite for that confused and submissive captive at home - never mind if she is his daughter," the court's ruling said.
(September 18, 2004 issue)
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