14,400 years for rape

MANILA - A PHILIPPINE court on Friday 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 Friday. 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.

She said he forced her to have intercourse with him almost every day, except when she had her period or on holidays, when he would make her perform oral sex.

The ordeal only ended after she and her siblings spent a vacation with their mother's relatives. Reluctant to return to her father at the end of the vacation, she broke down and told her family about the abuse. Her mother returned home from Hong Kong and helped her file the case. -- AP