Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno has urged the public to immediately report to the Philippine National Police - Women's and Children's Protection Desk (WCPD) all forms of violence against women and children to prevent further harm on victims.

Puno made the call as he said that Ruby Rose Barrameda-Jimenez could still be alive today had she or her family reported the alleged wife battering she had received to any of the WCPDs of the PNP.

Puno said he was somewhat personally involved in the case because the victim's sister, the former beauty queen Rochelle Barrameda, had approached him about a year and a half ago through a mutual friend to seek help after becoming desperate over the lack of progress in the case of the then missing Barrameda-Jimenez.

Puno said he has directed the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) to take over the case. The CIDG, he said, had looked for witnesses to shed light on Barrameda-Jimenez’s whereabouts, searching as far as Bicol until one of those involved in the killing came forward to confess and narrate the gruesome fate that had befallen her.

“It’s so sad that Rochelle came to us when her sister was missing already,” he said. “And you know it took one year and a half before this case was solved. But we chased people all the way, all the way to Bicol, all the way to Samar. We went all over the country looking for witnesses until finally somebody came up and told us exactly where to find the corpse.”

According to Puno, "this could have been prevented if during the time that she was being beaten up, it should have been reported to the police that this was happening,” he said.

The secretary said the WCPDs, which are being established or expanded nationwide in partnership with non-government organizations, are the police centers where children and women who have been neglected or physically and mentally abused can turn to for help in bringing to justice the perpetrators of these crimes against them.

The PNP’s goal, he said, is to ensure that these WCPDs are functioning in every municipality as “one-stop shops” for the investigation and treatment of victims of child abuse, violence against women and other similar crimes.

Barrameda-Jimenez disappeared on March 14, 2007 after a bitter custody
dispute with her estranged husband, Manuel Jimenez III, for their two children.

Her body was found off Navotas City on June 10, more than two years after she went missing. On June 11, the PNP-National Capital Region Office (NCRPO) formally filed murder charges against Barrameda-Jimenez’s father-in-law, lawyer Manuel Jimenez II; his brother, Lope Jimenez, owner of the Buena Suerte Jimenez Fishing and Trading Company; and five others.