Almost five years after the crime, security guard Lester Ivan Rivera was meted out three life terms for the rape-slay of 19-year-old computer science student Given Grace Cebanico in October 2011.
The crime had shocked not only the UP Los Baños community but also all parents nationwide. Given Grace’s bruised body was found in a canal near the campus by a morning jogger. She had been shot in the forehead and stabbed several times; her mouth was stuffed with cloth, her hands tied behind her. For two days before then, her parents had been frantically searching for her.
No one deserves such a brutal death, least of all this young woman who had literally been God’s gift of grace to her parents, thus her name—a name that also reflected her character, as a video of her singing and hosting a Sunday school event showed. A cheerful soul, a diligent student and a good daughter was how her father Daniel, a pastor, described her.
As her parents would learn, Given Grace stayed out late on that fateful night to finish a school project in a classmate’s dorm, and was on her way back to her own dorm on campus when accosted and forced into a tricycle driven by one Percival de Guzman. He and security guard Rivera had planned “only” to rob Given Grace, as had been their wont with other UPLB students every time they needed cash after a gambling loss. But she was so pretty, Rivera confessed later, after his grandfather got wind of the crime and surrendered him to authorities.
Rivera and De Guzman punched Given Grace until she lost consciousness, and took turns raping her, police said. A third man, who jumped off the tricycle when he realized what the two others had in mind, positively identified them. Police recovered from them an iPhone which, when switched on, had Given Grace’s picture as wallpaper. De Guzman awaits sentencing next month.
Yet even justice served will not stem the grief of Given Grace’s parents. We miss her so much, Daniel Cebanico said. “I wish we could again hold her in our arms and tell her we love her very much.”
Nor will Rivera’s sentence quell the anxiety among parents of students at UPLB, the scene of a number of rape-slays, such as that of 14-year-old sampaguita vendor Rochel Geronda only a few months after Given Grace’s own ordeal. This forested campus first hit the headlines in 1993 with the gang rape and murder of student Eileen Sarmenta by a cabal led by then Calauan Mayor Antonio Sanchez, who are all serving seven life terms. That case should have immediately prompted a serious evaluation of security measures given the vastness of the area and the diverse population of its neighboring barangays.
But time and again, after the hue and cry have settled down, things revert back to pretty much what they were. And one is prompted to ask: Are our girls so expendable that authorities can’t—or won’t—do more for them? The evening news is littered with stories of little girls gone missing and later found dead—in grassy lots, abandoned buildings or waterways, abused by strangers and even neighbors who had likely offered them a sweet treat.
And what of parents who direct their children to strip and simulate sex acts before a video camera, their images then sold on the internet to pedophiles and perverts worldwide? The rationalization is that they’re only pictures, and the children weren’t touched, as if being peddled onscreen weren’t in fact abuse and a glaring cause for concern.
But these are exceptions, it’s been said, out of the norm so they become news. We’re a matriarchal society, it’s been pointed out, we’ve had two women presidents, hundreds of women officials, some of the world’s most influential businesswomen, international beauty queens, and one of the highest literacy rates for women.
And, it’s been bragged about, we’re not as bad as China, where a one-child policy meant couples disposing of infant girls to be able to try again for the preferred male heir. Or Nigeria, where Islamist militants kidnap little girls and treat them as sex slaves, sell them off in marriage, or turn them into suicide bombers.
Well, no. But every day we lose grace. We have a presidential contender who treats rape as a joke and won’t apologize for it. He remains acceptable—and actually enjoys wide, even delighted, support for all his misogynist views. It’s very telling of how women and girls are regarded in this proudly Christian nation.