Karen Vertido suffered a second rape in court when she recounted her 1996 ordeal. This time around, she’s bracing herself to recount her rape anew by filing a communication with a United Nations body that seeks changes in the country’s justice system.

ONE night of terror was the rape one woman suffered in 1996. The trial was an eight-year ordeal she had to endure when she decided file a case, feeling violated all over again, only to be denied justice with the acquittal of her alleged rapist.

Now Karen Vertido has dared yet again to seek justice, and is willing to give “an account of her rape and victimization” anew “by her own government,” she says. This time around, Karen hopes to get justice through a communication she has filed under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (OP-CEDAW). The Philippines became a signatory to this UN treaty on July 17, 1980, and ratified it on July 19, 1981.

A communication is an instrument through which individuals or groups may petition the CEDAW Committee to act on certain cases, with the primary condition that all national remedies have been exhausted. The other instrument provided for in the protocol is the inquiry procedure, which may be used for cases of serious or systematic violation of women’s rights and/or discrimination against women by a State Party or any of its apparatus or agency.

The Karen Vertido communication is the first rape case filed under OP-CEDAW in November 2007. The communication to the CEDAW Committee seeks personal remedies for Vertido, as well as far reaching changes in Philippine laws, in the justice system and in the realm of social-political culture.

In her communication that Vertido prepared with lead counsel Evalyn Ursua, she asserts: “I hold this state, the Philippines, accountable for rape… happening within its boundaries. I hold my state accountable for a judge who at best is ignorant about laws and the realities of women, and who may be corrupt at worst. I call on my state not to put such people to become judges, but only people who are truly capable of trying women’s cases. I claim every inalienable right and every right this country promised to me as its citizen, from protection of my body, my livelihood, to protection of my honor. I claim restitution for having been violated first by one depraved man, and then later by a society that says it is okay to rape women…”

The document recounts Vertido’s testimony of the events that took place on the night of April 26, 1996, when she claims to have been raped by Davao businessman Jose Custodio after a social gathering they both attended as members of the Davao Chamber of Commerce.

Informed by the CEDAW Committee in February 2008 about the Vertido communication, the government replied in July 2008, that Vertido could have availed herself of the special remedy of certiorari for grave abuse of discretion under Section 1, Rule 65 of the Revised Rules of Court to question a verdict of acquittal.

Ursua, however, argues that such a claim is misleading because, among others, the remedy of certiorari is not a matter of right, but is an extraordinary remedy only granted by judicial discretion. She added that a certiorari applies on errors of jurisdiction and not of judgment, as seen in this case.

Vertido and her supporters claim that the judge based her decision upon “gender based-myths and misconceptions about rape and its victims, and in bad faith, distorted the evidence submitted.”

In her own words during the Unifem Launch of the Progress of the World’s Women Report and Making the MDGs Work for All in February 2009, Vertido described her trial from 1997 to 2005 as ” rape all over again: rape of honor and the last vestiges of respectability by defense lawyers, by a doubting, unsympathetic judge.”

A report made by the non-government organization Women’s Legal Bureau noted some of the myths that the judge used as bases for acquitting accused rapist Jose Custodio:

• That a rape victim must try to escape at every opportunity;
• To be raped by means of intimidation, the victim should be timid or easily cowered which, according to the judge in Vertido’s case, she was not (basing this perception on the fact that Vertido was a career woman and married, and therefore no longer a young and naive virginal maiden);
• To be raped by means of threat, there must be a clear evidence of direct threat, which the judge says the complainant failed to establish;
• That because the victim and the accused are more than “nodding acquaintances” the sexual act must then be consensual;
• That the victim should prove she physically resisted all throughout the act of rape, and if she had not, it is to be concluded that she had consented.

As author of the communication, Vertido is no longer asking for the indictment of the acquitted Custodio, but for the Philippines to implement changes in accordance with its commitment to CEDAW.

The Karen Vertido case may not be a special one, “but whatever happens, [the communication will make a difference” not only in the Philippines but in other Asian countries as well, as it can pave the way for other Filipinos and Asians to see the concreteness of the Protocol in their lives, explains Ursua.

Asked why she continued the fight for justice despite the pain it has already caused her for almost a decade now, Vertido said, “It could have been anybody else… but this landed on my lap. I fight because I am given the opportunity to make this world more respectful of women.” Women’s Feature Service