‘Atio’s family manipulated by lawyer’

The dean of the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Faculty of Civil Law slammed yesterday lawyer Lorna Kapunan for allegedly being behind the plan of the Castillo family to file criminal charges against him and other school officials over the hazing incident that resulted in the death of law freshman Horacio Castillo III last month.

Dean Nilo Divina expressed belief that Kapunan prodded the victim’s family to sue him instead of focusing on obtaining justice for the student.

“It’s unfortunate that (Atio’s) family is being manipulated by their lawyer into doing something that is patently baseless,” Divina said in a text message.

“Our objective should be to find justice for (Atio) and find out the truth. Instead, the obvious objective is now to lay the blame on innocent people to further the lawyer’s personal agenda,” he added.

Kapunan is also the counsel for the estranged wife of Commission on Elections chairman Andres Bautista, Patricia, who filed a disbarment case against Divina.

Divina, who belongs to the Aegis Juris fraternity that Castillo wanted to join, allegedly deposited money to the bank accounts of the Comelec chief and received commissions on his behalf from Smartmatic Corp., supplier of the automated election machines that were used in the May 2016 elections.

An impeachment complaint that Patricia filed against her estranged husband was junked at the House of Representatives justice committee after it was deemed insufficient in form.

In the disbarment complaint, Divina allegedly violated the lawyer’s code of ethics.