Teen model sues manager, event organizer for sexual abuse

CEBU, Philippines — A modeling manager and an event organizer are now facing complaints for allegedly violating the anti-human trafficking law.

This after a female teenage model accused her former manager, the owner of a modeling agency in Cebu, for conniving with the event organizer in setting her up to be sexually abused.

The accused manager and event organizer were identified as Miles Marlon Wafer and Renato Yosores Jr., respectively.

The teenage model's identity has been withheld to protect her and her family.

The model and her family sought help from an anti-child trafficking group in Cebu, Children's Legal Bureau (CLB), a non-profit organization, in filing the cases before the Mandaue City Prosecutor's Office on Wednesday, June 29.

The teenage model said that on September 13, 2021, she went to a hotel in Mandaue City where a supposed screening for a “bikini open” was set up by her manager, but the model ended up being abused by the events organizer instead.

According to her, it was her manager who told her to go to the hotel for the screening without telling her whom she was meeting.

The teenage model was also not informed that she was the only one to be screened in the supposed photo shoot.

According to her, she wanted to back out, but was unable to do so when the organizer set her up for dinner.

She was then led into the organizer's car and brought to a motel in Tipolo, Mandaue City where she was allegedly raped.

In a separate complaint, the teenage model narrated that while inside one of the rooms, the organizer instructed her to wear a swimsuit and to flirt with him.

She said that the organizer boasted about his other models competing for his attention. He also took potshots of her cheap phone and promised her a better one and money so that her mother did not have to work hard, and he would arrange for her to have “sugar daddies" if she stuck with him.

The organizer allegedly raped her before sending her home in his car.

Both the modeling manager and the event organizer are charged for violating of Section 4 of Republic Act 10364 or the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act which is "to recruit, obtain, hire, provide, offer, transport, transfer, maintain, harbor, or receive a person by any means, including those done under the pretext of domestic or overseas employment or training or apprenticeship, for the purpose of prostitution, pornography, or sexual exploitation.”

On the other hand, the CLB backs the teenage model in her quest for justice in the belief that several other girls have been possibly victims of the same scheme by sexual predators.

“There is sufficient cause for us to believe that there was connivance between the manager and the organizer. All the circumstances point to the fact that the model was led to the lion’s den. She was in such situation where she can no longer resist an impending abuse," said Atty. Kristins Macriana Laplana, legal officer of CLB and assisting counsel of the model.

Lawyer Noemi Truya-Abarientos, spokesperson of CLB, said that this is not the first time that they learned that women and children are being lured into the glamour of the modeling and pageant world, only to be sexually abused and trafficked.

"We are glad that she (teenage model) found the courage to pursue this case against her manager and the events organizer. She could have chosen to be silent, but she fought, not only for herself but also for others who were victimized by her perpetrators," Abarientos said.

"We are hoping that her coming out will lead to a review of some practices in the modeling industry that make women and children open preys to sexual predators," she added.

CLB is now assisting the teenage model under its program, Strength-Counter-Trafficking in Persons Project with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Partnership for Development Assistance (PDAP). — Rubie Mae T. Sollano, CNU Intern, GMR (FREEMAN)