REGIONAL Trial Court (RTC) Branch 6 Judge Ester Veloso convicted two persons for recruiting and prostituting 10 women for sexual exploitation in 2013.
Veloso found Geraldine Barinque and Ryan Alfante guilty of attempted trafficking in persons.
The judge sentenced them to 15 years in prison and ordered them to pay a fine of P500,000 each.
Barinque and Alfante were also ordered to pay each victim P100,000 as moral damages.
The Regional Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, led by Senior Insp. Maria Theresa Macatangay of the Regional Intelligence Division, conducted an entrapment that led to the arrest of Barinque and Alfante inside a hotel in Barangay Mabolo, Cebu City on July 5, 2013.
They two had hired women for prostitution and sexual exploitation.
Authorities caught Barinque bringing 10 women, two of them minors, to a foreigner and a policeman who posed as decoys inside the Mabolo hotel.
Police said Alfante transported the trafficked women using a rented van from Toledo City to Cebu City.
Barinque received from the police decoy P40,000 in marked bills as payment for the victims’ sexual services.
The women were later taken to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) 7.
The entrapment and rescue operation were carried out by a joint operation of the DSWD 7 and the International Justice Mission (IJM).
The Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor charged Barinque and Alfante with qualified trafficking in persons before the RTC.
Last Oct. 10, Barinque and Alfante pleaded guilty to a lesser offense of attempted trafficking, which prompted Judge Veloso to hand down her judgment.
In a statement, the IJM said both parties, after the promulgation, “left the court with a sigh of relief for the justice which the complainants obtained.”
