POLICE on Monday filed charges of qualified trafficking, sexual assault and child abuse against a Russian national who was arrested for allegedly molesting children at his apartment in El Monte Verde Subdivision, Barangay Lamac, Consolacion, north Cebu.
Escorted by policemen, Dmitri Nikuli was brought to the Cebu Provincial Police Office past 10 a.m.
When presented before Prosecutor Ethel Soria Miel, he opted to undergo a preliminary investigation that would allow him to refute the allegations.
Nikuli was given seven days to submit his counter-affidavit.
If there were sufficient evidence against him, charges would be elevated in court. Otherwise, the cases would be
dismissed.
Under the law, qualified trafficking is a non-bailable offense.
The 45-year-old Russian national refused to issue a statement to reporters.
Lawyer Joan Saniel, executive director of the Children’s Legal Bureau (CLB), said they were contemplating on filing separate charges against the parents of the rescued minors.
“We have to assess what really was their participation so we know what particular violations they have committed,” she said in a text message to Cebu Daily News.
Saniel said they would hold a case conference with other government agencies to discuss what course of action to take against the parents.
Police arrested Nikuli inside his apartment in Consolacion town last Friday after a parent of one of the minors informed the police regarding the foreigner’s illegal operations.
Six girls aged 5, 8, 9, 11, 12 and 16 were rescued.
The girls and their four parents had stayed at Nikuli’s apartment for two weeks — a practice that they would usually do whenever the foreigner, an employee of an airline company in Russia, was in Cebu.
The mother of the 9-year-old girl alleged that she only learned last week that Nikuli had been molesting her daughter and the other children inside his room.
She said she was preparing dinner when she heard her daughter screaming in one of the rooms on the second floor.
She said she later found her daughter naked inside Nikuli’s room.
The girl said Nikuli touched her private part and that it was not the first time that it happened.
SPO2 Marjorie Paller of the Women and Children’s Protection Desk of Consolacion police said the four parents and their children met Nikuli after a fire in Barangay Subangdaku, Mandaue City in July 2017.
The respondent allegedly offered them help and had sent monthly allowances to the four families.
Whenever he was in Cebu, Nikuli reportedly asked the families to stay with him in his rented house in Consolacion.
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