‘Sick’ pa videotapes 17-year-old daughter who was taking a bath

By ALEX P. VIDAL / PNS
June 9, 2006

ILOILO CITY  –    “Forgive me, I didn’t mean it. I’m only sick in the mind and I admit I need (to see) a doctor.”

This was the appeal made by a 47-year-old Chinese-Filipino businessman to her 17-year-old daughter who found the videotape recorder attached to a cellular phone owned by her father secretly placed inside the bathroom while she was taking a bath at around 1 o’clock in the afternoon last June 6 in Brgy. Hipodromo, City Proper here.

“Go away. I don’t want to see your face anymore. I will report you to my aunt,” screamed Melody (not her real name), a second year college student at the University of San Agustin, while running away from the suspect who was remorseful and apologetic while chasing and egging her not to panic.

Melody’s violent shouts attracted the attention of her board mates who hid her in one of the rooms downstairs.

Alone

Melody occupies a room alone in the second floor of the boarding house. She yelled at the top of her voice in order to shoo away her frantic father who wanted to embrace and appease her.

The father, who owns a big merchandizing store in downtown, City Proper, is not married to Melody’s mother. He has a legal wife and children and they live in another house somewhere in the city.

Melody is his love child to a saleslady who is also married to a cop.

“Please come to me. I love you and I am your father. I cannot afford to molest you,” the father appealed in a hoarse voice. “It was (the videotaping) only a joke.”

But Melody, whose mother lives with another family also somewhere in the city, said she now fears her father who provides her regular allowance and pays for her education and boarding house.

Videocamera

She said she noticed that her father’s cellular phone equipped with videocamera, which he purportedly “left” after visiting her earlier, was focusing to her as she was taking a bath.

When she checked and rewinded the gadget, she discovered her nude body had been recorded in the videotape. Melody suspected that her father, who admitted he fancies sexual toys and some pornographic materials “to escape from my family problems”, had intentionally and maliciously placed the cellular phone inside the bathroom.

She complained that she felt her privacy had been violated and her being a female defiled.

When Melody refused to face her father and continued to badmouth him, he broke down like a kid. “It was my fault. I failed to control myself,” he bemoaned.

Warning

He warned Melody not to tell anybody about what happened and not to call her aunt in the cellular phone “because they will again use this incident as a big issue against me and this will worsen my many problems.”

Unable to win her after 20 minutes of negotiation, the misty-eyed father left and vowed to return “in a few minutes.”

Later, Melody’s mother arrived after being tipped by Melody’s aunt who got Melody’s call. Spewing with unprintables, the 44-year-old mother stayed behind and slept beside her daughter overnight for the first time in that boarding house.

“I will kill him if he returns and harm my daughter,” vowed the mother who, before the incident happened, communicated only with her daughter through Melody’s aunt.