The Department of Justice has upheld its earlier resolution dismissing the rape and attempted rape charges against actor and television show host Ferdinand “Vhong” Navarro.
In a resolution, the DoJ denied the petition for review filed by model-stylist Deniece Cornejo, which challenged a September 2017 resolution that found no probable cause to press charges against Navarro in court.
Cornejo had accused Navarro of sexually abusing her on Jan. 17, 2014 and five days later on Jan. 22, when the actor was mauled by the group of businessman Cedric Lee, resulting in the actor’s hospitalization for multiple injuries.
The DoJ ruled that there was no sufficient evidence to warrant Navarro’s indictment as it junked Cornejo’s additional pieces of evidence, particularly the two previous rape complaints filed by two other women, a published statement of another, and an alleged date-rape drug.
Aside from procedural flaws in the evidence filing, the DOJ said that even an assumption that Navarro has the “propensity to rape women” does not cure Cornejo’s “incredible account of the incident, especially her belated, much belated, account of her having been raped” by the actor on Jan. 17, 2014.
“Her case implodes for its own weakness. It would be such a stretch to breathe credibility into what is essentially lifeless simply because [Navarro] fits the profile of a rapist. The profile does not help,” stated resolution promulgated last April 30.
The DoJ also was not convinced that the date-rape drug was confiscated from Navarro.
The DoJ rejected Cornejo’s faulting of the Office of the Prosecutor General, the authority behind last year’s complaint throw-out, for echoing findings of inconsistencies in her narrative of the alleged rape and attempted rape.
“There is nothing horrendous and unfair about the Review Resolution’s harping on the findings of inconsistencies from previous resolutions which dismissed the rape complaints,” the resolution said.
The DOJ also cited the 2007 Supreme Court decision on People vs. Judy Salidaga, which states that judges are duty-bound to carefully scrutinize the testimony of an alleged rape victim and not to treat it as “gospel truth.”
The DOJ said this also applies to preliminary investigations, “where reason…is still the measure of credibility and merit.”
Recently resigned Justice Undersecretary Reynante Orceo, by authority of the Justice Secretary, signed the resolution.
