SENATE deputy minority leader Risa Hontiveros yesterday said former members of the Surigao del Norte cult have signified their willingness to testify against Jey Rence Quilario, alias Senior Agila, the leader of the Socorro Bayanihan Services Inc. (SBSI).
In an interview with dzBB, Hontiveros said the former SBSI members who escaped from the cult’s lair in Sitio Kapihan, Barangay Sering, Socorro have mustered enough courage to divulge the alleged abuses of Senior Agila after watching three minors and two adults who testified against their former leader during the first hearing of the joint Senate committees on public order, and women hearing last week.
Hontiveros said the “witness-survivors” signified their intent to tell what they knew against Senior Agila through the local government unit of Socorro.
“That is one of the good things that happened during our first hearing. And this supports the statement of Atty. Richard Dano, head of the task force created by Mayor Riza Timcang, so that the problems brought about by the cult leaders will be finally solved. Many have escaped before but were afraid to testify,” Hontiveros said.
“After that hearing, which we learned was live-streamed in Socorro, their colleagues watched the hearing and many of them sent feelers that they want to testify (against Senior Agila),” she said.
She said even active members of the cult who were brought by Senior Agila to the Senate to refute the allegations of the witnesses but did not have the chance to speak now want to turn their backs against their cult leader.
“Hopefully, in the next scheduled hearing they will testify for their children and against the cult leaders,” she added.
She said according to the “new witnesses,” Senior Agila started with his “deviant practices” soon after SBSI members migrated to Sitio Kapihan.
Among the illegal practices was forcing married women to marry a man in the cult even if the women had not yet been annulled.
Hontiveros said she established during the hearing that Senior Agila took advantage of the SBSI minor members’ vulnerability after the province was hit by a strong earthquake in 2019.
She said Senior Agila brainwashed the SBSI members to live in the 353-hectare Sitio Kapihan, a protected area of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
The DENR last Friday suspended its agreement with the SBSI which allowed the group to use the 353-hectare protected area pending investigation into the alleged gross violations of the terms and conditions of the Protected Area Community-Based Resource Management Agreement.
The agreement, signed on June 15, 2004, allowed SBSI to develop and conserve the area for 25 years, set to end in 2029.
The DENR said it started to investigate the alleged violations in the agreement in 2019 but the SBSI members restricted the entry of field inspectors.
In 2021 and 2022, the DENR said it called the attention of the SBSI for recurring violations but the group disregarded the department, even setting up traps in the area for the department’s inspectors.
Hontiveros said it was in 2019 when the “deviant practices” began.
“That was the time when he committed deviant practices and other cultic practices like forming a charismatic personality that demands blind obedience. Child marriages, rape among minors, forced labor also started and extreme punishments were imposed on members who defied Senior Agila’s orders,” she said.
