PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. DAVID SILVANO Y HAYAG, ACCUSED-APPELLANT.

People versus Silvano

The Case

People versus Silvano is a criminal case in which the People of the Philippines prosecuted David Silvano for the rape of his own sixteen-year-old daughter, Sheryl. The trial court convicted him of qualified rape and imposed the supreme penalty of death, and the case reached the Supreme Court on automatic appeal because death cases are reviewed as a matter of course. The decision matters to a reviewee for three reasons: it states the elements of qualified rape under the death penalty law, it explains how a father's moral ascendancy substitutes for force and intimidation, and it reminds us that the Court reviews a death case with the utmost scrutiny, because life once taken, like virginity once defiled, can never be restored.

Procedural History

The accused was charged with rape before the Regional Trial Court of Quezon City. Before the prosecution presented its evidence, the complaint was amended without objection from the accused, and when he was re-arraigned he entered the same plea of not guilty. After the prosecution rested, the accused filed a motion for leave to file a demurrer to evidence on the ground that his guilt was not proven beyond reasonable doubt, and the trial court denied that motion. The accused then presented his own evidence.

The trial court rendered judgment convicting him of the crime charged, sentencing him to death, and ordering him to pay the victim fifty thousand pesos as moral damages and thirty thousand pesos as exemplary damages. Because the penalty imposed was death, the case went to the Supreme Court on automatic appeal, and there the accused insisted on his innocence, denying the accusation and arguing that the charge was a mere ploy of his wife and her relatives to sever their marital relationship.

Facts

Sheryl Silvano was sixteen years old, born on the twentieth of January 1980, the legitimate daughter of the accused and Shirley Ann Pedrosa, and the eldest child and only girl among three children. On the night of the twenty-third of January 1996, at about half past ten, she was sleeping in her room on the second floor of the family home on Scout Rallos Street in Quezon City when her father awakened her and began scolding her for coming home late. He appeared tipsy. He then lifted her shirt, and because she wore no bra, he held and kissed her breasts. When she tried to stop him, he told her that she had done something wrong and that this was the punishment he had warned her about. He removed her shorts and her underwear, kissed her private organ while inserting his finger into her vagina, placed her feet on his shoulders, and inserted his private organ into hers, performing a pumping motion. She pushed at his shoulders with her feet and told him to stop, but he gripped her legs between his arms so that she could not break free. He later rubbed his organ against hers, and she felt a cold, sticky liquid on her private organ and her stomach, which he wiped with a tissue before putting on his pants and leaving the room. The room was lit by a fluorescent light that he himself had switched on.

Sheryl could no longer bear the sexual abuse, which had begun when she was thirteen, and on the twelfth of February she left the family home and stayed with her maternal grandmother. When she was asked to return and settle her differences with her father, she confided the real reason to her mother and grandmother, who immediately sought the assistance of a police general related by marriage to her mother's cousin.

The physician who examined her found an elastic, fleshy-type hymen with deep healed lacerations at the three, seven, and nine o'clock positions, and concluded that she was in a non-virgin state physically, with no external signs of recent trauma and smears negative for spermatozoa.

Issues

• Whether or not the guilt of the accused for qualified rape was proven beyond reasonable doubt.
• Whether or not the elements of qualified rape that warrant the death penalty were alleged and proven, namely that the victim was under eighteen years of age and that the offender was her parent.
• Whether or not the victim's failure to offer tenacious resistance, and the circumstances of time and place, negate the elements of force and intimidation.

Applicable Provisions

Section 335 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended by Section 11 of Republic Act Number 7659, provides:

When and how rape is committed - Rape is committed by having carnal knowledge of a woman under any of the following circumstances. 1.) By using force or intimidation; 2.) When the woman is deprived of reason or otherwise unconscious; and 3.) When the woman is under twelve years of age or is demented. The crime of rape shall be punished by reclusion perpetua. Whenever the crime of rape is committed with the use of a deadly weapon or by two or more persons, the penalty shall be reclusion perpetua to death. When by reason or on the occasion of the rape, the victim has become insane, the penalty shall be death. When the rape is attempted or frustrated and a homicide is committed by reason or on the occasion thereof, the penalty shall be reclusion perpetua to death. When by reason or on the occasion of the rape, a homicide is committed, the penalty shall be death. The death penalty shall also be imposed if the crime of rape is committed with any the following attendant circumstances: 1.) When the victim is under eighteen (18) years of age and the offender is a parent, ascendant, step-parent, guardian, relative by consanguinity or affinity within the third civil degree, or the common-law spouse of the parent of the victim; 2.) When the victim is under the custody of the police or military authorities; 3.) When the rape is committed in full view of the husband, parent, any of the children or other relatives within the third degree of consanguinity; 4.) When the victim is a religious or a child below seven (7) years old; 5.) When the offender knows that he is afflicted with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) disease; 6.) When committed by any member of the Armed Forces of the Philippines or Philippine National Police or any law enforcement agency; 7.) When by reason or on the occasion of the rape, the victim has suffered permanent physical mutilation.

This is the provision under which the accused was charged and convicted, and its first special circumstance is the very qualification that raised the penalty to death in this case.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the presumption of innocence was overcome and guilt was established beyond reasonable doubt. It applied the three settled principles in the review of rape cases: that an accusation for rape can be made with facility, is difficult to prove, but is more difficult for the innocent accused to disprove; that because only two persons are usually involved, the complainant's testimony is scrutinized with extreme caution; and that the prosecution's evidence stands or falls on its own merits and cannot draw strength from the weakness of the defense. The victim's testimony was corroborated by the medical findings, and the Court held that carnal knowledge is consummated by the mere touching of the woman's labia by the male sex organ, that the briefest contact of penile invasion is as serious as full penetration, that rupture of the hymen is not required, and that the absence of fresh lacerations does not disprove rape.

On the second issue, the Court held that the prosecution must allege and prove the ordinary elements of sexual congress, with a woman, by force and without consent, and, to warrant death, the additional elements that the victim was under eighteen years of age and that the offender was a parent of the victim. All of these were present: the victim was sixteen, and the accused was her father.

On the third issue, the Court held that the failure to shout or offer tenacious resistance cannot be construed as voluntary submission, that the law does not impose upon a rape victim the burden of proving resistance, and that physical resistance need not be established when intimidation is exercised and the victim submits out of fear for her life or personal safety. Force, violence, or intimidation is a relative term, depending on the age, size, and strength of the parties and on their relationship. The victim was sixteen, about five feet six inches tall, and weighed one hundred twenty-eight pounds, while her father was in his early forties, about six feet two inches tall, and weighed two hundred ten pounds. The Court held that the father's moral ascendancy over her substituted for violence or intimidation. It rejected the arguments that the room was small, that the sleeping brothers would have been awakened, that the hour was too early, that the scolding would have caused noise, and that the acts lasted about forty minutes, holding that lust is no respecter of time and place, that rape can be committed in the same room where other family members are sleeping, and that there is no rule that rape can be committed only in seclusion.

Doctrine

Qualified rape under Section 335 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended by Republic Act Number 7659, requires the ordinary elements of sexual congress with a woman by force and without consent, plus, for the death penalty, that the victim is under eighteen years of age and that the offender is a parent, ascendant, step-parent, guardian, relative by consanguinity or affinity within the third civil degree, or the common-law spouse of the parent. Carnal knowledge is consummated by the mere touching of the labia by the male organ; full penetration and rupture of the hymen are not required. A father's moral ascendancy over his daughter substitutes for force and intimidation, and the law does not impose upon a rape victim the burden of proving resistance.

Disposition

The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction of the accused for qualified rape, upheld the penalty of death, and sustained the award of fifty thousand pesos as moral damages and thirty thousand pesos as exemplary damages.

Remember This

Memorize the line that a father's moral ascendancy substitutes for force and intimidation, and that the law does not impose upon a rape victim the burden of proving resistance. Examiners use this case on qualified rape to test the elements that raise the penalty to death and the rule that resistance is not an element of the crime.