DOJ to prosecutor: Answer rape raps

JUSTICE Secretary Leila M. De Lima has ordered Provincial Prosecutor Arturo Ubaub to answer the rape and sexual harassment charges filed against him by a former subordinate.

Ubaub has fervently denied any wrongdoing, saying he was a victim of malicious intrigues by people who are out to destroy his name.

De Lima’s order only covered the administrative aspect of both charges because the complainant had earlier decided not to pursue the case anymore by executing an affidavit of desistance.

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) order came out last Friday, according to documents obtained by this paper from several sources.

The woman who worked under Ubaub for years accused the prosecutor of rape and series of sexual harassments sometime in March this year. Most of the sexual advances on her, she said, occurred right inside Ubaub’s office at the Hall of Justice.

She has since been reassigned to the City Prosecutor’s Office after she filed the complaint before the Office of the Regional State Prosecutor.

Regional State Prosecutor Jaime L. Umpa explained that the complainant’s withdrawal of her complaint does not extinguish Ubaub’s administrative liability.

The complainant, Umpa said, had merely withdrawn the criminal charges against the fiscal, but did not repudiate her allegations as contained in her affidavit.

“Her allegations remain true. We have to pursue the administrative aspect of the case because the respondent is a public servant,” Umpa said.

“The affidavit of the complainant would suffice the filing of an administrative action against him (Ubaub), especially there was admission from the complainant that it really happened,” Umpa added.

In previous interviews, Ubaub declined to further comment on the rape allegation, saying he will answer it when it is filed in a proper venue.

Ubaub had earlier been accused of arm-twisting in the case of a minor who accused her uncle of attempted rape.

The minor said Ubaub and another prosecutor had tried to coerce her into entering an amicable settlement with the accused.

Ubaub denied there was any coercion, saying he merely facilitated a possible mediation between the two camps, saying the girl had not been raped anyway.

Umpa found this detestable, saying mediation could not have been allowed as it was a rape case and the victim was a minor.

De Lima, during her assumption of office, called on prosecutors and employees of the DOJ to be agents of reform by “ridding ourselves of corruption and shoring up our competence.”

“Therefore, it is imperative that any grand effort to reform government in this new administration must begin with the most stringent and ardent efforts to reform the DOJ itself,” she said.

Umpa said he decided to pursue the administrative case against Ubaub because he said: “I would not tolerate wrongdoings of anyone working under my office.” ( Annabelle L. Ricalde)

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