ZAMBOANGA CITY — Two persons charged with illegal recruitment and human trafficking were convicted by the regional trial court (RTC) here and sentenced them to double-life imprisonment.
The court also ordered the accused to pay a fine of R2.5 million, aside from payment of moral and exemplary damages to the victims.
In a 19-page decision, the RTC sentenced Hadja Jarma Lalli y Puri, and Ronnie Aringoy y Masion to double-life jail term and ordered them to pay fines and damages. Both of them will be imprisoned in the San Ramon Penal Farm here.
Their companion, identified as Nestor Relampagos, remains at large and is believed hiding in Malaysia.
Lolita Plando of this city, in her testimony, said she had been forced to engage in prostitution after the accused brought her and four other women to Labuan, Malaysia in June, this year.
She said the accused "conspired and confederated together by means of deception when they promised non-existent economic opportunities in Malaysia." She paid R28,000 to the recruiters as placement fee, she said.
"In her vivid testimony, one of the victims presented before the Prosecutor’s Office her gruesome ordeal for having been ‘fed’ to two to five male customers every night with corresponding physical harm, sometimes at gunpoint from each one of them upon her resistance to conform with their malicious fantasies", Fiscal Ricardo Cabaron disclosed.
Plando and two other victims, one identified as Honey Michelle, worked at a nightclub in Labuan, Malaysia a few days after they arrived there.
The club is said to be a prostitution den where many Filipinos worked forcibly.
Plando’s ordeal ended when she was able to get in touch with her sister, Janet, who is married to Said Abubakar, an Indonesian living in Sipangkot Felda, Malaysia.
Plando said her sister’s husband posed as a costumer who paid at the club counter for the services of "No. 60," who was one of the sex workers.
From the nightclub, they went to the house of the Indonesian’s friend before they proceeded to the place of her sister. After almost two months in Malaysia, she eventually came home.
In the counter-affidavit, accused, Lalli said it was the first time that she met the victim while on board a ferry to Malaysia.
Aringoy said he had personally known the victim since her younger days, adding that Plando is a mother of four children sired by different fathers.
Fiscal Cabaron said the presentation of the evidence by the complainant, done in a candid and detailed manner, had convinced the court to convict the accused.
