THE Court of Appeals (CA) upheld a Department of Justice resolution finding probable cause that Pulupandan, Mayor Magdaleno Peña of Negros Occidental province violated Republic Act (RA) 9262, or the Anti-Violence against Women and their Children Act.

In a 19-page resolution written by Associate Justice Eduardo Peralta Jr. and concurred in by Associate Justices Vicente Veloso and Jane Aurora Lantion, the appellate court’s Twelfth Division affirmed in toto a state prosecutor’s findings that Peña committed violence against his former girlfriend, actress and television host Maria Roxanne “Plinky” Recto, who was recently granted permanent custody of their illegitimate child.

Peralta held in his December 17, 2012 decision that Prosecutor Hazel Valdez did not commit grave abuse of discretion when she conducted a preliminary investigation on the case and recommended the filing of the same.

On July 12, 2005, Recto filed the petition for a temporary or permanent protection order under the act against Peña. Recto claimed that when she lived with Peña, he “subjected her to constant emotional, verbal and psychological abuse which got worse and unbearable during the last two years that they lived together.”

On June 29, 2005, she said that Peña assaulted her in front of their house helpers, and the following morning he acted as if nothing had happened.

Peña filed an appeal after then Justice Secretary Alberto Agra backed Valdez’s recommendation through resolutions on May 18, 2010 and June 29, 2010.

The appellate court gave weight to Recto’s claimed that she was pushed thrice by Peña and trapped her with a rattan chair during a fight in their condo unit in Mandaluyong on June 29, 2005. The court noted that Peña admitted the same.

In its ruling, the Appeals court said that while it absorbed “the findings and conclusions of the court a quo in civil vase . . . such evaluation was independent from the determination and assessment by the prosecutor in a preliminary investigation of the existence of probable case against petitioner for violation of RA No. 9262.”

“While the trial court did no find sufficient justification for issuance of a permanent protection order [PPO] in civil case . . . it will not necessarily bar a prosecutor from exercising an executive function.”

Meanwhile, the appeals court affirmed the ruling issued by the regional trial court in Mandaluyong junking Recto’s petition for a protection order holding that the verdict merely showed that there was no threat that the abuse against her will remain.

It can be recalled that Recto won her custody-related case against Peña but the court did not buy her claim that she was a battered woman.

The appellate court’s special fifth division partly granted Recto’s appeal assailing a July 12, 2007 decision of Branch 214 of the Regional Trial Court of Mandaluyong, in a civil case she lodged before the lower court.

The TV personality, a sister of Sen. Ralph Recto, lashed at the ruling rendered by then judge Edwin Sorongon of the trial court in Mandaluyong denying her petition for a protection order from her former lover.