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DOJ affirms junking of rape, attempted rape charges vs. Vhong Navarro


The Department of Justice (DOJ) has affirmed its previous junking of rape and attempted rape charges against actor and television show host Ferdinand "Vhong" Navarro.

In a resolution dated April 30, the DOJ denied the petition for review filed by model-stylist Deniece Cornejo, which challenged a Sept. 2017 resolution that found no probable cause to press charges against Navarro in court.

Cornejo had alleged that Navarro sexually abused her on January 17, 2014 and five days later on January 22,  the date the actor was mauled by the group of businessman Cedric Lee, resulting in the actor's hospitalization for multiple injuries.

The DOJ maintained there was no sufficient evidence to warrant Navarro's indictment, saying it was "not impressed" by Cornejo's additional pieces of evidence: two previous rape complaints filed by two other women, a published statement of another, and an alleged date-rape drug.

Apart from procedural flaws in the evidence filing, the DOJ noted that even an assumption that Navaro has the "propensity to rape women" does not cure Cornejo's "incredible account of the incident, especially her belated, much belated, account of her having been raped" by the actor on Jan. 17, 2014.

"Her case implodes fro its own weakness. It would be such a stretch to breathe credibility into what is essentially lifeless simply because [Navarro] fits the profile of a rapist. The profile does not help," the resolution stated.

The date-rape drug, meanwhile, was not proven to have been confiscated from Navarro, it said.

The DOJ was also unconvinced with Cornejo's faulting of the Office of the Prosecutor General, the authority behind last year's complaint throw-out, for echoing findings of inconsistencies in her narrative of the alleged rape and attempted rape.

"There is nothing horrendous and unfair about the Review Resolution's harping on the findings of inconsistencies from previous resolutions which dismissed the rape complaints," the DOJ said.

"It is a mark of prudence to restate sound finding for obvious reason. It is not nitpicking. It is economizing. A good finding always merits a restatement."

A Manila court's granting of Cornejo's petition to post bail in the serious illegal detention case failed to sway the DOJ, which called her claim that this proves her rape allegation a "fallacy."

In closing, the resolution quoted the 2007 Supreme Court decision on People vs. Judy Salidaga, which states judges are duty-bound to carefully scrutinize the testimony of an alleged rape victim and not to treat it as "gospel truth."

The DOJ said this also applies to preliminary investigations, "where reason...is still the measure of credibility and merit."

The resolution was signed by the now-resigned DOJ undersecretary Reynante Orceo by authority of the Secretary of Justice. — BM, GMA News

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