Grade 8 Student From Bicol Is Latest Rape-Slay Victim; Family Cries Out For Justice

A heartbreaking tragedy in Bicol is in danger of being overcast and covered up amidst the loud hullabaloo created by the death of a 17-year old drug runner and this time people will have to decide which lives matter most.

August 21, 2017. Cris Barcoma, a Bicolano Security guard, on his Facebook account posted a picture of his sister, his own flesh and blood, lying naked in a shallow dirt ditch, lifeless. “Justice for our sister”, he said, rage and anguish apparent in his caption. “Raped and murdered. Where are those who are against death penalty? Where are human rights? If addicts get killed you make a lot of noise but if innocents [are murdered] you are all speechless. Useless human rights.”

When Grade 8 student Karen Barcoma’s mother sent her out to a lending company to pay for a loan, it never crossed her mind that that would be the last time she would see her daughter alive and that the next time the mother would lay her eyes on her 13-year-old daughter would be as a bloody, violated corpse in a dirt pit just a few meters from their house the next day. The victim was naked, and her clothes and undergarments were found near her body, leading to the assumption that she had been raped.

The “human rights” that the brother of the deceased was referring to in his caption on the photo he posted is most likely the Commission on Human Rights, nationally famous for defending the welfare of criminals and so called ‘victims of extra-judicial killings” but also notorious for keeping silent in the case of innocent victims, most of the time regardless of how tragic the situation is.

Apparently, thousands of Filipinos feel the same way that Cris Barcoma does regarding this catastrophe as his post has now been shared 27, 789 times, with 1269 comments and 5.2K reactions. 

Meanwhile, news of this tragedy does not seem to have reached national media yet as it does not appear to have been reported on any national paper or news network.

As of press time, there is still no identified suspect in Karen Barcoma’s case and the family continues to cry out for the justice that they deserve.

Check out Chris Barcoma’s original FB post and the comments here.