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PHILIPPINE SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

EN BANC

[G.R. No. 9745. November 7, 1914. ]

THE UNITED STATES, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ELISEO REYES, Defendant-Appellant.

Francisco Sevilla and W. H. Booram, for Appellant.

Solicitor-General Corpus, for Appellee.

SYLLABUS


1. ABDUCTION WITH CONSENT; ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS. — As this Supreme Court has already held (U. S. v. Reyes, 20 Phil. Rep. 510), the crime of abduction with the consent of the abducted punished by article 446 of the Penal Code, does not require that the abducted woman be personally removed from the house — of her parents or guardians. It is sufficient that she leave it and be withdrawn from their control and vigilance, yielding to the cajolery and promises of her seducer, because the law does not punish the violence done to the person abducted, when it is assumed that she have her consent, but the disgrace to her family and the alarm caused therein by the disappearance of one of its members who by her age and sex is susceptible to cajolery and deceit. (Supreme court of Spain, decision o f November 30, 1876.) The place where the abduction is committed is immaterial, for the law takes no account of it. (Decisions of October 29, 1896, and March 31, 1896.)

2. ID.; ID. — The defendant did not personally remove A. E., a virgin 17 years of age, from the house of her parents, but he did induce her to leave it and did, in spite of his being married, maintain amorous relations with her for six months prior to the day of the abduction, gaining her consent during all that time and seducing her; and after the girl by agreement with him had left the paternal roof on the day mentioned and was withdrawn from her parents’ control and vigilance, he took her away with him and carnally enjoyed her during the time that he had her in his company: Held, That such facts constitute the crime of abduction, provided for and punished by article 446 of the Penal Code, as amended by Act No. 2298 of the Philippine Legislature.


D E C I S I O N


ARAULLO, J.:


Eliseo Reyes was charged, in the information presented for the purpose, with having, on or about the 10th day of October, 1913, in the city of Manila, abducted willfully, unlawfully, and feloniously and with unchaste designs, with her own consent, Apolonia Enriquez, a virgin 17 years of age. After a trial of the case in all its proceedings, judgment was rendered by the Court of First Instance of this city, on December 6, 1913, whereby the defendant was found guilty of the said crime and sentenced to the penalty of one year eight months and twenty-one days of prision correccional, to endow the offended party in the sum of P250, to maintain the offspring, should there be any, to suffer in case of insolvency the corresponding subsidiary imprisonment, and to pay the costs. The defendant appealed from this judgment.

The sole question raised in this court by defendant’s counsel, through the appeal submitted and by means of the assignments of error set forth in the two briefs presented by him, is whether Apolonia Enriquez was seduced or induced by the defendant to leave the house of her parents and join the defendant —an indispensable requisite, as defendant’s counsel himself correctly says, for the existence of the crime of abduction with consent, provided for and punished by article 446 of the Penal Code.

The defense, in raising this question, admits the existence of the other two requisites which must concur in order that the said crime may be held to have been committed, to wit that the said girl was under 18 years of age and a virgin when the crime under prosecution was committed.

It was proven that Apolonia Enriquez left the house of her parents, with whom she was living in Calle Singalong, on the morning of October 10, 1913, and went to another house on the same street; that the same day the defendant joined her and they afterwards went together to another house in Calle Sandejas, where they stayed several days
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