MARINNET AMPER
Alleged suicide victim may have been raped
Inquirer
Last updated 06:01am (Mla time) 11/16/2007
DAVAO CITY -- Mariannet Amper, the 12-year-old girl who reportedly committed suicide on Nov. 2 because of poverty, was likely raped, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday.
An autopsy of the girl’s body revealed lacerations caused by penetration in her genitals and that the ligature found around her neck was “self-inflicted.â€
“May punit ang hymen (The hymen was torn),†was how Dr. Tomas Dimaandal, medico-legal officer of the police’s Scene of Crime Operators (Soco) in Southern Mindanao, described what he found during a press conference called by Duterte.
But Dimaandal said the lacerations had healed, indicating that these were old, “probably [inflicted] weeks†before her death.
Amper’s body was reportedly found hanging by her 11-year-old brother inside a room of their house in Barangay Ma-a in Talomo District here.
Amper’s sister, Maricar, 22, said the family was shocked at the autopsy results. “We never expected it. Even our father was also shocked,†she told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone.
Amper’s father Isabelo said he expected the result of the autopsy.
“Even before it was conducted, there was already talk that my daughter might have been raped. But I am ready to cooperate. I could not do that to my daughter,†he said.
He said that although he was hurt by speculations that he had sexually abused his daughter, he wanted the investigation finished to determine who really did it.
“We thought our pain was already over but here comes another problem again,†he said.
Father, brother suspects
Supt. Matthew Baccay, Talomo police chief, said the investigation would start from the result of the autopsy. He said Amper’s elder brother and her father were now considered suspects.
Magdalena, Mariannet’s mother, said she did not have any tears to shed anymore.
“This happened already. But I want everybody to know that no one from the family, including my husband, could do that to my baby,†she said.
The family agreed to an autopsy as speculation about how Amper died continued. The girl’s father had earlier said he believed his daughter’s skin would only be scraped during the autopsy to find out what was underneath.
Isabelo had said the family could also put to rest talk that the body found inside their house was not Mariannet’s. Rumors circulated in the neighborhood that Amper was “naengkanto†(under a curse) and that the retrieved body was actually a banana trunk.
Self-inflicted
The family has already accepted that Amper had indeed committed suicide, and Thursday’s autopsy, according to Dimaandal, indicated that her death was self-inflicted.
“Hindi siya pilit. (It was not forced.) There’s only a single and consistent ligature mark. There’s no sign of struggle or whatsoever,†Dimaandal said.
Mayor Duterte said he believed that Mariannet had been raped and that he had endorsed the case to the Talomo police station for investigation.
He said the girl’s father would also be invited for questioning although he clarified that he was not a suspect.
“I didn’t say it’s the father who did it, but it’s the responsibility of the father if something happens to his daughter because of irresponsibility,†Duterte said.
Maricar said the family could not think of her father as the likely suspect. “It pains us whenever we hear something like that,†she said.
DepEd probe
She described her father as strict, “but he would not abuse my sister.â€
An earlier investigation conducted by a team from the Department of Education discovered that Amper had planned to commit suicide as early as June.
Jenielito Atenillo, spokesperson of the DepEd in the region, said Amper’s classmates told the team that she would often cry without any reason.
The girl would sometimes hide inside the school’s toilet, Atenillo said.
“Mariannet told them she had a big problem and that she was ashamed to open up and that there were passages in her diary that may cause her mother and father to break up if revealed,†he said. Reports from Nef Lucson, Nico Alconaba and Jeffrey Tupas, Inquirer Mindanao
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