News

‘Nicole’ too ashamed to go home

First posted 10:01pm (Mla time) Oct 09, 2006
By DJ Yap
Inquirer



"NICOLE" has not been home for almost a year since that fateful night in Subic, when she was allegedly raped by a US Marine while his colleagues cheered on.

While the general public knows her only as Nicole, her true identity is no secret to her friends and neighbors in her hometown.

“I haven't set foot in Zamboanga since it happened. I don't think I can ever show my face there again,” Nicole said in an interview last week in a Quezon City restaurant.

“My old friends and neighbors in my hometown have been asking about me,” she continued in Filipino. “They're always asking my relatives when I'm coming home, or assuring my relatives that they aren't affected by what happened.”

Among her friends, ironically enough, are American servicemen holding military exercises in Mindanao. Her mother has also been trying to convince her to go home.

“But even if she's forcing me to, I just can't bring myself to do it,” Nicole said.

Now, her long-term plans include migrating to another country. “I just want to go some place where I won’t be recognized,” said the 23-year-old business graduate.

But “it's not going to be the United States,” she said, although she has two aunts there.

Nicole said her life changed after the incident: “If none of this had happened, I would probably be married now."

She was engaged to be married, but broke it off with her fiancé because she did not want "to jeopardize the case."

Nicole recently celebrated her birthday with supporters from various women's groups who have rallied around her cause.

It was a fun gathering, she said, although if the incident had not happened, she would have celebrated the occasion "back home with my American friends."

These days, Nicole is staying in an undisclosed location in Metro Manila with her mother and two brothers. If not attending court hearings, which ended last week, she meets with supporters, exercises, or just stays home.

Like young women her age, Nicole finds time to go to bars and other gimmick places. “But I'm escorted everywhere by my brothers or my mother,” she said.

“If my mother was not so strict with me before, now she's very strict,” she said, adding that she does not mind her family's protectiveness.

The Subic rape case has been submitted for resolution before the sala of Makati judge Benjamin Pozon. He will promulgate his decision on November 27, a month before the case marks its first anniversary.