Rape accomplice learns what’s reclusion perpetua the hard way
By Miko Morelos, Philippine Daily Inquirer
February 7, 2012

MANILA, Philippines—“What does reclusion perpetua mean?” Erica Bianca Enanoria asked.

Her smirking jail guard, leafing through the documents of her case, put it simply for her: “That’s life imprisonment.”
Enanoria was thus led out of the courtroom sobbing, cupping her mouth with her cuffed hands, after a Makati City judge pronounced her guilty in connection with the rape of a student in Mindanao in February 2008.

The court also declared her ineligible for parole for helping in the abduction of a University of Southern Mindanao student till the victim was delivered to the alleged rapist, then a government official in Kabakan, North Cotabato.
The court said Enanoria was convicted as a “principal suspect by cooperation.”

Two other suspects—the accused rapist and Enanoria’s uncle, Andy Montawal, and another accessory, Jerome Montawal—remain at large with standing warrants for their arrest.

They were reportedly members of an influential clan in North Cotabato, with Andy Montawal heading the association of barangay (village) chairmen in Datu Montawal town at the time of the crime.

“Without [Enanoria’s] participation, the commission of the rape would not have been accomplished,” said Judge Cristina Javalera-Sulit of the Makati Regional Trial Court-Branch 140 in a decision promulgated Tuesday.

“The acts performed by [Enanoria] are necessary and indispensable to the rape of the complainant,” said Sulit, who also ordered Enanoria to pay the victim P250,000 in damages.

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