Two daughters of hostage taker were sexually abused by uncle

What would push a man to hold a child hostage? A father’s helpless anger could have been the motive behind the actions of Diomedes Talbo, who held four-year-old Dexter Balala hostage in a Pasay City bus terminal five days ago, investigators said yesterday.

Talbo’s daughters were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of their uncle in Mindanao, a situation which may have driven the drug-crazed Talbo to take desperate measures.

In a two-page letter dated May 6 to her maternal grandmother Rosing, Talbo’s younger daughter said she and her elder sister were being sexually abused by their uncle, a certain Ricardo Ubay. Rosing resides in Barangay Villa Cruz, San Mateo, Isabela.

"We don’t want to live here anymore," Talbo’s daughter said in her letter to her grandmother. She asked her grandmother to take them back early so they could enroll this coming school year.

A copy of the letter reached Metro Manila police chief Deputy Director Edgar Aglipay, a copy of which was provided The STAR by the PNP.

A report submitted by the Southern Police District (SPD) to Aglipay showed that Talbo and his wife were legally separated two years ago. Talbo’s wife then took their two daughters with her to her hometown in Mindanao. Talbo’s wife and daughters went to live with Ubay, whose wife was her sister.

Talbo, meanwhile, remarried and settled in Tabuk, in Kalinga province.

In her letter, the girl said Ubay was in the habit of fondling her and her sister’s private parts: "At night Ubay would sleep beside (us) and he asked her to hold his (private parts)." She also said she moved out of Ubay’s home and into the house of another uncle, identified only as Julian, to escape Ubay’s sexual abuse. She said she could not sleep at Ubay’s house because she was constantly on guard against his sexual advances.

Apparently informed of the girl’s letter to her grandmother, Talbo and his second wife went to Rosing’s home last May 27, where Rosing handed her former son-in-law P13,000 with which to fetch his daughters in Mindanao and bring them to her. Talbo left for Manila last May 29.

According to case investigators, Talbo was high on illegal drugs when he took Balala hostage inside the Philtranco bus terminal at Apelo Cruz St., Barangay Malibay, Pasay City last May 31.

The hostage situation ended in tragedy two hours later, leaving both Balala and his captor dead and riddled with bullets. The mishandling of the situation by responding police officers prompted PNP chief Leandro Mendoza to send all 341 members of the Pasay City police force back to barracks for retraining.

Aglipay sacked Pasay City police chief Eduardo de la Cerna and ordered the 19 police officers who responded to the hostage situation to report to the SPD to expedite the investigation into the incident.

The Internal Affairs Service (IAS) is also conducting a parallel probe for the summary dismissal of the police officers who fired the bullets that killed Balala. An autopsy report showed that Balala’s body bore 13 stab wounds from the knife wielded by Talbo and five gunshot wounds – one in the chest and four more in his extremities. The medico-legal report said Balala was killed by a stab wound in his left kidney and a bullet that ripped through his heart.

In a related development, 110,000 policemen nationwide will have to undergo a crisis management course as a result of the bungled Pasay City rescue operation.

PNP spokesman Senior Superintendent Leonardo Espina said the retraining on crisis management will be given to all police personnel on the provincial and district levels, from police directors down to the lowest-ranking policeman.

"This will be replicated in all (Metro Manila) districts and, later on, all police units nationwide. All of our personnel will be retrained and re-oriented. What we are trying to address here (is the need to prevent a repeat of) what happened last Friday," Espina said. - With Christina Mendez, Nikko Dizon