Mindanaotoday.com | SC disbars Oro lawyer; group hails ruling
By: Uriel Quilinguing
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – While a child-protection group hailed the decision of the Supreme Court to disbar a prominent Cagayan de Oro-based lawyer for unethical acts, yet justice has yet to be served for rape victims because the foreign national may have slipped out of the country prior to his conviction.
Complainant Virgelia Demata, Philippine Island Kids International Foundation, Inc. (PIKIFI) Executive Director, on Saturday, June 4, expressed mixed reactions, saying they sought the disbarment of lawyer Alejandro Jose Pallugna which the SC granted but lamented the accused of raping a 10-year-old girl which they assisted remained scot-free.
Demata is co-founder of PIKIFI, an accredited non-governmental organization by the Department of Social Welfare and Development, offering developmental and humanitarian aid to minor children suffering all forms of human abuses in Cagayan de Oro.
The SC decision detailed that sometime in April 2012, PIKIFI rescued several street kids in Cagayan de Oro from being prostituted.
Among those rescued was a 10-year-old girl (name withheld) and the group helped her file a complaint against a certain American national named Michael John Collins for rape and alleged accomplice Sheena “Choy-choy” Maglinte for qualified human trafficking.
Pallugna was the legal counsel of the accused and his alleged accomplice, as well as with an earlier rape complaint from another female minor which was dismissed.
The first complainant asserted that she was unable to attend the court hearings because Pallugna sent her to Davao City to avoid the case.
Although the en-banc decision of the SC on PIKIFI’s complaint against Pallugna was handed down Nov. 23, last year, it was uploaded and made public on SC website only last May 24, this year.
Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo and 13 associate justices affixed their signatures on the 16-page verdict.
“Having clearly violated the Lawyer’s Oath and the Canons of the Code of Professional Responsibility, Atty. Alejandro C. Pallugna is disbarred from the practice of law,” a portion of the SC decision states, and that “his name is ordered stricken from the Roll of Attorneys effective immediately.”
The PIKIFI complaint stemmed from Pallugna’s alleged violation of Rule 138 of the Rules of Court and the Code of Professional Responsibility.
On this, the SC found that Pallugna used schemes to suppress the truth and defeat the ends of justice, citing that the latter was previously suspended from the practice of law and has already been warned that the commission of a similar future transgression shall be dealt with more severely.
According to the PIKIFI complaint that sometime in Feb. 2016, the accused lawyer offered the victim P600 not to appear in the scheduled first hearing, and P250 for non-appearance in succeeding hearings.
But the victim appeared, hence Pallugna reportedly devised another plan and this time hired her boyfriend as security guard (P2,500 weekly salary) to be assigned somewhere in Maramag, Bukidnon.
The complainant was also offered P30,000 once the case against Collins is dismissed but she has to join her boyfriend in Bukidnon, but nobody must know their whereabouts.
As a result, she failed to appear in three court hearings from May 31 to Aug. 23, 2016.
PIKIFI with the assistance of police and social welfare personnel managed to locate and eventually rescue the victim and her boyfriend, also a former PIKIFI beneficiary.
They were then placed under the Witness Protection Program of the Department of Justice.
It was only then, Sept. 20, 2016, that the complainant was able to attend the court hearing, just in time for the ultimatum prior to the dismissal of the case.
But after Sept. 27, 2016 Collins had posted bail and did not appear in court until his conviction.
In response to the PIKIFI complaint, Pallugna described the allegations against him as “a conclusion of fiction and a mere assumption without basis” and denied having offered money to the rape victim for the latter not to appear in court hearings.
With the accused (Pallugna) who opted to remain silent to an imputation of money offers to the child-rape victim, the SC has no choice but to consider silence as an implied admission of the charge made against him.
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