KIDAPAWAN CITY (MindaNews/ 26 October)– A 50-year old New Zealand national was arrested on Thursday in Davao City for allegedly raping two teenage girls from this city.
Supt. Renante Cabico, this city’s police chief, said the local police along with social welfare workers here coordinated with the Davao City police in arresting David William Wakefield, an executive of Mecs Labor Hiring Company based in Mozambique in South Africa.
Cabico said they asked the girls, aged 12 and 13, to guide them in locating the foreigner in a hotel somewhere in Davao City.
The suspect was about to check out from the hotel for his travel back to South Africa when they raided the place, the police official said.
Police said that two women, identified only as Sarah and Aiza, recruited the two girls at the city’s public market on Monday to work in Davao City. They were transported to Davao City on thes same day and brought to the hotel room of the foreigner, where they were allegedly ordered to undress and take a bath.
Of the two girls from Kidapawan City, only the 13-year old victim was later asked to stay, they told the police.
Both girls accused the foreigner of raping them.
“What made their experience more traumatic was that when we had them checked in a hospital in Davao City, both were positive of a sexually-transmitted disease, allegedly coming from the suspect,” Cabico said.
Along with the two girls were eight other teenagers who came from different areas in Mindanao, the police official said.
Records showed that Wakefield visited the country three times.
Actually, the foreigner is already on the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation watch list, Cabico said.
Wakefield would be slapped with multiple counts of statutory rape and violations of the Human Trafficking Act and Anti-Child Abuse Act, said Cabico, citing the statement of the victims and the nude photographs of the teenage girls taken from the suspect’s mobile phone. (Malu Cadelina Manar/MindaNews)