One person is raped in the Philippines every hour.

This is based on police records

cited by the Center for Women’s Resources in 2017. Sadly, this figure could just be
a fraction of the many victims of rape who are incapacitated to speak out. Sixty
percent of rape victims don’t acknowledge that they had been raped because of fear,
trauma, and shame.

Rape in the Philippines has become so common, that it seems to have desensitized us
—even if rape these days is just as gruesome, monstrous, and revolting as rape in
the past. Yet, rape cases no longer repulse us to a point that these become daily
headlines for months; perhaps there’s just too many of them. There was a time when
people used to remember the victims’ names.

The following are just some of the most unspeakable rape-slay cases that have
shocked the Philippines.

The Silawan Rape Case (2019)

In March 2019 in Lapu-Lapu City in the Visayas, 16-year-old Christine Lee Silawan
asked permission from her mother if she could go to church that evening. She was a
member of the church ministry that collected donations from churchgoers. Her mother
allowed her to go, thinking that she would return home after an hour. She never
did.

The next day, a body of a girl about the same age as Silawan was found in a field,
the skin and muscles on her face carved clean right down to the bone, revealing the
skull, eyeballs still intact. She also had over 30 stab wounds on different parts
of her body, some of these were defense wounds. Photos of the gruesome scene
quickly went viral on social media. People learned that bone was really white.

Police had a hard time identifying the victim because of what was done to her face.
Eventually, they identified her as Christine based on DNA results. Her mother was
inconsolable.

Nearly a month later, police arrested 42-year-old Renato Payupan Llenes, who
confessed to the crime. According to Llenes, he posed as a different person on
social media and lured Silawan to meet with him. He became obsessed with Silawan,
and when he learned that she had relationships with other boys, he became jealous
and enraged, so he killed her.

“I used a dummy Facebook account to lure Christine. We chatted frequently until we

became a couple on Facebook,” said Llenes in a report by the Inquirer. “We agreed
to meet personally for the first time on March 10 at Sacred Heart Parish in Lapu-
Lapu City. We fought on our way (to Barangay Bangkal) and that’s when I killed
her.”

Llenes also detailed how he was inspired by the Momo Challenge that urged children
to commit various crimes and self-harm.

When Llenes was asked where he learned to carve skin and muscle off the bone, he
answered that he learned it on social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook.
Llenes used scissors to remove skin and muscle off Silawan’s face, revealing her
skull with her eyeballs still intact.

Prior to Llenes’ confession, police had arrested a 17-year-old male suspect.

According to Llenes, he came forward because he was haunted by his conscience and
that he couldn’t bear the fact that another person would suffer the consequences of
his crime.

Vizconde Massacre (1991)

The Vizconde Massacre is one of the most high-profile rape and murder cases in the
Philippines. It occurred on June 30, 1991 when three members of the Vizconde family
were brutally murdered in their home in B.F. Homes, Parañaque.

The victims were Carmela Vizconde, 19, Jennifer Vizconde, 6, and their mother,
Estrellita Vizconde, 49. Lauro Vizconde, the father and husband of the victims, was
away on a business trip in the U.S. Estrellita suffered thirteen stab wounds.

Carmella was raped before she was murdered, sustaining 17 stab wounds. Jennifer,
who was only 6 years old, had 19 stab wounds. The massacre left the nation in
disbelief. There had been no leads in the case until, in 1995, Jessica Alfaro
stepped forward as a self-described key witness to the crime.

Alfaro’s testimony sent shockwaves around the nation: she implicated the sons of
some of the country’s wealthiest and powerful families. Among the accused were
Hubert Webb, Antonio Lejano II, Hospicio Fernandez, Michael Gatchalian, Miguel
Rodriguez, Peter Estrada, Joey Filart and Artemio Ventura. Webb is the son of
former senator Freddie Webb.

According to Alfaro’s testimony, she was friends with the suspects, and they were
having a “drug session” when Hubert Webb allegedly decided to rape Carmela
Vizconde. Alfaro said that when they got to the residence, Webb instructed her to
come with him because Estrellita would only allow Carmela to entertain female
guests. Once in the residence, Alfaro claimed that Webb followed Carmela to the
dining room, so she went out to have a smoke. From outside the house, Alfaro said
she saw Lejano and Ventura take a knife from the kitchen, and proceeded to kill the
mother first.

Alfaro further explained that after Estrellita was killed, Webb proceeded to rape
Carmela, but Jennifer woke up and saw what he was doing to her sister, so she
jumped on Webb and bit him. Alfaro reported that Webb threw Jennifer across the
room to a wall, then stabbed her repeatedly. Alfaro’s testimonies were corroborated
by other witnesses.

On the other hand, Webb's legal team argued that Alfaro’s testimony should not be
considered reliable because she admitted that she, too, was intoxicated during the
events of the murder.

Almost a decade after the massacre, on January 6, 2000, the court ruled that Webb
and company were guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

After another decade, In December 2010, the Supreme Court reversed the lower
court’s decision, ruling that the prosecution failed to prove that Webb and company
were guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Webb was acquitted and then released from
prison right after.

The Supreme Court decision broke the heart of Lauro Vizconde, who, since the murder
of his family, dedicated the rest of his life with the group Volunteers Against
Crime and Corruption. Lauro passed away in 2016.