SUBIC BAY FREEPORT Zone, 4 November 2005 — A 22-year-old Filipino woman has allegedly been raped by six American servicemen in a rented van, in what may well be the first major test of the criminal justice provisions of the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement.
Feliciano Salonga, chair of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), told GMA television news that the driver of the vehicle, a Starex van, had identified the six servicemen. Earlier reports said five Americans were involved in the incident.
Initial investigation showed that the woman and her stepsister were with two servicemen bar-hopping in the sprawling freeport at around 8 p.m. on Nov. 1. After two hours, the woman said the men got into trouble with the Shore Patrol and left them in a karaoke bar.
There, she danced with a male Caucasian, believed to be a US Marine, who later took her outside to a rented vehicle and drove away. The victim, according to officers patrolling the area, was later seen by witnesses being dropped from a dark-colored van by a foreigner near the Subic telecommunications office on Waterfront Road.
Salonga said the woman “was hysterical ... without clothes on except a pair of panties.”
“It was obvious that she was intoxicated and incoherent,” he said. “We gave her a pair of pants to cover herself.”
The woman was taken to the James L. Gordon Memorial Hospital in nearby Olongapo City for a medico-legal examination. She narrated her story after regaining her faculties.
A complaint filed with the Olongapo prosecutor’s office identified the servicemen as Keith Silkwood, Daniel Smith, Albert Lara, Dominic Duplantis, Corey Barris and Chad Carpenter.
Initial reports said the Americans were from the aircraft carrier USS Essex, which departed yesterday along with the dock landing ship USS McHenry and the amphibious transport dock USS Juneau.
Salonga said the six men were left behind.
Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo said that he was “deeply concerned” about the allegation and that he would “support all efforts by our authorities to investigate, prosecute and try this case.”
“The perpetrators of this heinous crime shall be brought to justice,” said Romulo, who had just arrived from a trip to the United States.
Romulo said he had instructed the presidential Commission on the VFA to assist the complainant and support the prosecution of the case. He and the defense secretary are cochairs of the commission.
A US Embassy statement earlier yesterday indicated that five US Marines were involved — not six — and that they remained in the Philippines in connection with the case. The five were under the responsibility of the embassy, the statement said.
It said the VFA “provides the mechanism for US and Filipino authorities to work together to determine the facts of the case and to ensure that accused individuals are available to both Filipino and US investigators since the allegations would be crimes under both Filipino and US laws.”
Criminal cases involving Americans before the US’ Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base — the largest outside the continental United States — were shut down in 1992 had grated on the sensitivities of Philippine nationalists and strained relations between Washington and Manila.
Militant groups say that before the bases were closed, there were 52 cases of rape, physical and sexual abuse committed against young women and children in areas surrounding the bases but that not a single American soldier had been arrested and convicted of the offenses.
