Hudson Bay President Acquitted on Rape Charges

The Canadian-based Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company was recently embroiled in controversy when Peter Gush, the company's president, chairman and chief executive officer, was charged with rape.

The case was brought against Gush by the government of Canada after Gush's Filipino housekeeper, Euphemia Pagcaliwangan, accused Gush of raping her early one Saturday morning in February while she was in her bedroom in the basement of Gush's suburban Toronto home.

In late September, Ontario provincial court judge Maurice Charles dismissed the case for lack of evidence, even though analysis of the. semen found on Pagcaliwangan's underclothes showed that it corresponded to Gush's blood type. Judge Charles was not persuaded by that finding, however, since 30% of the men in Ontario fall into the same category as Gush.

Charles was more persuaded by evidence Gush's lawyer introduced, showing that Pagcaliwangan, while in the Philippines several years ago, had once brought false charges of theft against a debtor to induce him to repay a loan. This practice is "common" in the Philippines, since "it is hard to collect civil debts under Philippine law," Pagcaliwangan's lawyer, Alan Cooper, told Multinational Monitor. But when Charles heard Pagcaliwangan admit that she had done this, he threw out the rape charges, calling her a "pathological liar" and a "confessed perjurer."

"Nowhere in the three-day hearing did she have any inconsistencies in the story about the rape," said one leader of the Filipino community in Toronto, outraged by the court's decision.

Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company is 45%owned by the South African conglomerate, Anglo American. Gush himself is South African.

Questions were raised about the charges against Gush by Hudson Bay stockholders and reporters at the firm's annual meeting in April. The board of directors, however, "reconfirmed their faith" in Gush, according to Hudson Bay spokesperson Harry Tompkins, at this meeting which took place several months before the court's decision. "This has all been a horrendous experience for him," Tompkins added.