Rape-in-a-Van Incidents Prompted MMDA to Offer P200,000 Reward for Info

Apart from installing more CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) units in EDSA-Magallanes Interchange in Makati City and  the deployment of additional patrols from the Philippine National Police, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Francis Tolentino  has expressed his firmness to solve the recent series of rape and abduction incidents  known as the Magallanes “rape van”  case and  had offered a P200,000 reward to anyone who can provide any lead or information  to the arrest of the perpetrators.

This is in reference to the separate rape and abduction incidents that happened starting September 30, along Magallanes Interchange where three victims,  a 21-year-old student, a 14-year old girl, and a 19-year-old transgender, were forcibly abducted while they were walking on the said interchange by three men riding a van. They were then gagged, hit  and then sexually-molested inside the moving vehicle.

reports show that the victims were pulled inside the van and were raped, image courtesy of ANC

According to the first reported victim, the 21-year-old student was walking along EDSA-Magallanes around 6:30 p.m when a heavily tinted van stopped in front of her and someone from the van pulled her bag. She thought at first that it was a holdup but then three men who were wearing bonnets grabbed her into the van. She said aside from the driver, there were three other men who forced her to sniff something, probably chloroform from a handkerchief, hit her and sexually-assaulted her. She was left for dead, unconscious and naked from waist down at a grassy side of a highway in Malolos, Bulacan where she was helped by a woman and her daughter.

The other similar rape and abduction incident was reported by a 14-year-old student who was on her way to school along Kalayaan Avenue in Makati when she was abducted by men and raped her as well. She was able to escape when the abductors stopped at a gasoline station.

With the rape incidents, a 19-year-old transgender woman revealed that she was also victimized with the same way of abduction, same month last year. She recalled that she was on her way to school when three men on board a heavily-tinted van grabbed her and pushed her inside the vehicle in broad daylight at the Magallanes Interchange near EDSA. She said that the perpetrators are “Middle Eastern-looking men” and when they realized that she is a transgender, she was beaten and hit, raped and kicked out of the van in a grassy land in Laguna.

MMDA is closely monitoring the investigation of the three cases, linking those incidents if they were done by the same group of suspects. Nonetheless, they offered a P200,000 reward to anyone who can provide information for the arrest of the group of criminals for speedy resolution.