Filipino gets 14,400 years in prison for raping daughter

MANILA - A Philippine court has sentenced a father to consecutive prison sentences totalling 14,400 years for raping his daughter almost every day for a year, according to documents released Friday.

The man, a tricycle driver, was initially sentenced to death by lethal injection in March 2006 but his lawyer appealed his conviction.

The Philippine Congress abolished the death penalty in June of that year.

In a Sep 8 decision, the Court of Appeals confirmed the man’s conviction of 360 counts of rape against his daughter, who was 13 years old at the time.

The court sentenced him to 40 years in prison for each count, a total of 14,400 years.

It rejected the father’s allegations that the charges were made up.

“The testimony of a rape victim who is still of tender years and brutalised by no less than a person of moral ascendancy in her family is generally given full weight and credence,” the court said in its eight-page decision released Friday.

The victim’s ordeal began in January 2001 when her mother left to work in Hong Kong as a domestic helper, leaving her and her two younger siblings in their father’s care.

In the summer of 2002, they eventually told a relative during a vacation about the sexual attacks. Her mother came home and the charges were filed against her father.