Child rapist jailed...for 14,400 years

A Philippine court today sentenced a father to 14,400 years in prison after he was convicted of the near daily rape of his teenage daughter over the course of a year.

A trial court originally condemned the man, a rickshaw driver, to die in March 2006, four years after he was formally charged with 360 counts of rape - allegedly carried out during the year his wife worked in Hong Kong.

But the Court of Appeals in Manila commuted the sentence to 40 years for each count, according to a court decision seen today.

The defendant can still appeal to the Supreme Court. It was not clear if he would.

The then-13-year-old victim, now 22, said her ordeal began in January 2001, when her mother left for work in Hong Kong as a domestic helper and left her three children with their father in Los Banos, a township just south of Manila.

The ordeal only ended after she and her siblings spent a holiday with their mother's relatives.

Reluctant to return to her father at the end of the holiday, she broke down and told her family about the abuse. Her mother returned home from Hong Kong and helped her file the case.

The appeals court affirmed the lower court's dismissal of the defence's contention that the man's wife made up the allegations to get custody of the children and marry a foreigner.