TAYUG–A man has been sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of repeatedly raping a 10-year old girl in Barangay San Juan, Umingan town.

Regional Trial Court Judge Ulysses Butuyan of branch 51 here found the accused, Roel Sarmiento, guilty beyond reasonable doubt for seven cases of rape from March to September 1997.

Butuyan also ordered Sarmiento to indemnify the complainant for damages amounting to P300,000.

“To the mind of the Court, the vast disparities in age and physique between the accused and the complainant, aggravated by his threat that hung for months like a sword of Damocles over her head, are conclusive proofs that each and every sexual assault perpetrated by the accused from March to September 1997 was a rape obtained by means of “force, threat and intimidation,” Butuyan said in his 22-page decision.

He added that “the Court has no charity to spare for the accused who interposed an oft-repeated sweetheart defense”.

“For a 10-year old Grade IV pupil and a Herculean tractor operator to be lovers is as absurd as it is bizarre in the normal course of human events,” Butuyan said.

Sarmiento, then 19 years old when he raped the victim, worked as a farm helper of the victim’s family. He went into hiding after the victim revealed what happened to her when her mother sensed something strange about her daughter’s body. The victim suffered a miscarriage after she went to the police to report the crime.

Sarmiento was only arrested in 2006.#

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