THE Supreme Court has denied the appeal and affirmed the penalty of life imprisonment for two individuals found guilty by a lower court of trafficking minors for sex.
The high court also ordered Rizalina Janario Gumba and Gloria Bueno Rellama to pay a fine of P2 million each.
In a decision penned by Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, the court’s Second Division denied the appeal of Gumba and Rellama, and affirmed the rulings of the Court of Appeals (CA) and the Pasay City Regional Trial Court (RTC), convicting them of qualified human trafficking.
Based on court records, the two were floor managers at a bar in Cavite where they hired the victims, whose ages range from 15 to early 20s.
Undercover agents posing as customers visited the bar on Oct. 10, 2014.
Gumba and Rellama told the agents they could have sex with the girls in the bar’s VIP room, for P1,500 per girl.
Twelve days later, a police entrapment and rescue operation led to the arrest of and filing of charges against Gumba and Rellama.
In sustaining the lower courts’ conviction ruling, the Supreme Court supported the prosecution’s claim that the two trafficked minors for prostitution.
The court said it was established that Gumba and Rellama offered minors to customers, not merely for entertainment but also for sex.
It was proven that the accused took advantage of the victims’ vulnerability as minors, that the victims confirmed the acts of the accused of offering and providing them to customers for sex in exchange for money, and that the certificates of live birth of the victims show that they were minors at the time of the crime.
The court also upheld the validity of the entrapment operation.
The Supreme Court ordered Gumba and Rellama to pay the victims P500,000 each in moral damages and P100,000 each in exemplary damages.
