THE Supreme Court upheld with modification the conviction of a man from statutory rape to rape, as it faulted the prosecution for failing to establish the mental age and cognitive deficiency of the victim that correspond to that of a child below 12 years of age.
In an en banc decision promulgated on October 29, 2024 that was only made public recently, the High Court, through Associate Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier, affirmed the conviction of Eduardo Dela Cruz only for rape.
The prosecution argued that Dela Cruz’s victim is a special child and had a mental age of a child below 12 years old at the time of the sexual assault in February 2015 inside a church.
The Regional Trial Court and the Court of Appeals convicted and affirmed the conviction of Dela Cruz for statutory rape as it held that all the elements of the crime were present and established by the prosecution in the case.
But the SC modified the RTC and CA’s findings, saying that the records did not bear any clinical identification of the victim’s mental age to warrant the conviction for statutory rape.
“We note that while the trial court did observe that based on the appearance and demeanor of the victim (identified in court documents as AAA267163) during the trial, she was a child, it failed to identify or at least calculate her mental age,” said the SC in a 13-page ruling.
“Also, the records did not bear any clinical identification of her mental age either. Verily, therefore, there is nothing to support the conclusion that the 16-year-old AAA267163 had a mental age of a child below 12 years old at the time she was raped to sustain a conviction for statutory rape,” it added.
The High Court explained that this is significant considering that under the law then prevailing, statutory rape involved child victims who are below 12 years of age.
“Hence, in cases of statutory rape involving victims with cognitive deficiency, their mental age corresponding to that of a child below 12 years of age should be established,” it added.
The SC said Dela Cruz should only be convicted for rape and sentenced him to suffer reclusion perpetua or life imprisonment.
