A San Enrique fighting cock handler was sentenced yesterday to 120 years imprisonment for three counts of rape committed against his 13-year-old neighbor in 1995.

Executive Judge Frances Guanzon of the Bago City Regional Trial Court sentenced Severo Parsan, alias Vero, to reclusion perpetua on three counts and ordered him to pay P150,000 in damages.

The victim was 13 years 11 months old when she was raped by Parsan, who was 38, on March 20, April 19 and June 4 in 1995 causing her to become pregnant, Guanzon noted.

Parsan told the court the 13-year-old, whose name is being withheld by the DAILY STAR, became pregnant because of their alleged mutual affection for each other, and that he, in fact, offered to marry her.

But the judge said the contention of Parsan that he and the 13-year-old were lovers is simply preposterous.

“It taxes one's credulity beyond limit, offends sensibilities and insults the intelligence even of an average man,” the judge said.

It is inconceivable and unimaginable that the 13-year-old would willingly have sex with a man more than 25 years her senior, the judge said.

If they were indeed sweethearts, the complainant would have agreed to marry him, considering she was already six months pregnant at the time of the filing of the cases against him and avoided humiliation and public curiosity, the judge said.

Instead she pursued the charges against the accused and underwent physical and emotional hardship and shame concomitant to a rape prosecution, the judge said.

“Only a woman seeking justice with truth as her weapon would have braved this calvary,” the judge added.

The judge also said the mother of the complainant would not have filed a complaint out of sheer malice knowing that it would expose her own daughter to humiliation and public curiosity.

The teenager testified that the rapes were all committed with the use of force and intimidation. The accused threatened that he would kill her if she told her parents what happened, she said.

Out of fear she did not tell her parents until changes in her physical features prompted her mother to ask if she was pregnant, she also told the court.*CPG

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