Felma Cabataña, 30, waits outside the Cebu Provincial Prosecutor’s Office during the filing of a parricide charge against her on January 3, 2019. (Rosalie Abatayo)
CEBU CITY, Philippines – Parricide charges have been filed against the mother from San Remigio town, northern Cebu, on Thursday, January 3, 2019 for allegedly beating to death her six-year-old son.
Glenn Del Rosario, the child’s father, stood as the complainant of the parricide case.
Felma Cabataña, 30, admitted having hit her son, who refused to take medicine for his fever, sometime on December 27, 2018 or three days before he died on December 30, 2018.
Cabataña said she only wanted to make her son, Kent Joseph Del Rosario, to take the medicine because she was worried about the child.
“Ako siyang gitingal unya di man gyud siya moinom sa tambal mao to nga akong siyang gibira unya nadapatan nako,” Cabataña told reporters during the filing of the case.
(I forced him to drink the medicine but he refused that is why I pulled him and then I hit him.)
But SPO3 Joe Johnnesky Ynot, investigator of the case, said that they had witnesses who testified that the child was habitually hit by his mother.
“Niadto mi sa ilang dapit, niingon ilang mga silingan nga gibun-og gyod ni ang bata sa iyang inahan. Naa pod mi witness ron nga niingon nga kaupat na ni niya gibadlong pero gibun-og gyod ang bata,” Ynot said.
(We went to their place and their neighbors told us that the mother would always hit the child. There is even a witness who told us that he already told the mother to stop hurting his child but she did not listen to him.)
“Naa pod mi witness nga ni-testify nga pag-December 30 sa kaadlawon, mga alas 4, niingon kuno ni ang inahan sa bata nga ‘hayaon tika ron,’” he added.
(There was also a witness who testified that at 4 a.m. on December 30, 2108 the witness heard the mother told her son that ‘you want to have your wake now.’)