MANILA, Philippines — The victims of self-styled son of God Apollo Quiboloy confronted their alleged abuser at the Senate yesterday, saying they were groomed to perform sexual services for the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) leader as part of their spiritual journey.
They revealed their identities after Quiboloy earlier mocked them for not showing their faces and hiding behind code names when they testified in previous Senate hearings.
Before the Senate committee on women, children and family relations presided over by Sen. Risa Hontiveros, the women narrated how Quiboloy and his accomplices used the Bible to justify sexual abuse as an act of sacrificing their bodies to the pastor, in the manner of Jesus Christ’s disciples.
Witnesses also confirmed the existence of the “Angels of Death” in the KOJC.
Col. Gene Licud, officer-in-charge of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in the Davao region, presented a diagram that detailed the organizational structure of the so-called Angels of Death to the Hontiveros panel.
“I come here today to share the truth that has been silenced for three decades because of great fear and this is also on behalf of the many victims who have suffered in silence just like we have,” said Teresita Valdehueza, a former head of KOJC’s logistics department.
Valdehueza was passionate about serving God through Quiboloy’s ministry until in 1993, she was instructed by Quiboloy to fly to Cebu and meet him where he would share with her a “divine revelation.”
She was then invited to spend the night with Quiboloy at the hotel, where she was told to surrender herself to the “anointed Son of God.”
“Sleeping beside a man I believed to be chosen by God was for me a great privilege, an opportunity for a sinner like me. But what followed shattered my sense of faith and trust. Without a word, after turning off the light, he embraced me, undressed me and violated me with his lustful act that left me in shock and speechless,” Valdehueza said.
“He then said, ‘This is the fulfillment of God’s revelation,’” she added.
Valdehueza said she began to question if she deserved to be raped by Quiboloy as she was conflicted if Quiboloy’s act is “God’s will or a gross abuse of power.”
A year later, Valdehueza said she was promoted to be part of Quiboloy’s “inner circle” of pastorals of women who “had likely endured similar experiences.”
“Without any words, we shared a mutual understanding. None of us dared speak about what had happened to us,” she said.
Speaking to the committee virtually, Ukrainian national Yulya Voronina, another alleged victim of the KOJC leader, said she was “groomed” by Quiboloy’s co-accused Jackielyn Roy to serve as Quiboloy’s pastoral who should offer her body to the pastor as part of her religious service.
“They have psychological instruments that they will use on you. They will punish and call us, scold us for a meeting and put us in shame, saying we are ungrateful because the pastor gave us everything and you just don’t want to give sacrifice your body, like Jesus Christ sacrificed,” Voronina said.
She added that Quiboloy always uses the Bible as an instrument to commit sexual acts on his victims.
In 1994, Valdehueza said she was sent to Hong Kong. She was so overwhelmed with “confusion and emotional turmoil” that she wrote a letter to Quiboloy “openly expressing my emotional distress” after he raped her and “exploited my genuine commitment and dedication to God.”
But instead of being reprimanded, Valdehueza said she was promoted to the concurrent positions of national crusade coordinator, national logistics coordinator and Luzon area administrator.
Part of her job was to “traffic” members from the Visayas and Mindanao to Luzon and Metro Manila to sing carols and raise P10 million to P15 million every December.
Things turned for the worse when in 1998, Valdehueza was sent back to the Philippines to be punished with “spiritual discipline” with seven months of “isolation and hunger” at KOJC’s Tamayong prayer mountain in Davao City.
She was placed inside a small, dark room with a rough bed made of uneven slabs with exposed nails.
“I woke each morning in pain, with no bedding and the cold October nights left me shivering. No one was allowed near me, as I was labeled filthy and deserving of this punishment,” Valdehueza told the Senate.
Valdehueza said she escaped in 1999 but was still terrorized when Quiboloy’s bodyguard Alex Camia told her he was supposed to liquidate her upon Quiboloy’s orders.
In justifying his threats, Valdehueza said Camia told her: “Doesn’t God permit the killing of the wicked?”
Voronina, for her part, said pastorals like them follow a schedule to have sex with Quiboloy, who she said has keys to their rooms.
“In the middle of the night, he comes to my room and have sex with me. You can’t run away. You can’t say ‘I don’t want,’ because if you do, he’d say, ‘You didn’t overcome your flesh. If you will not obey, you will go to hell,’” she recalled.
Voronina said she was called by Quiboloy to visit him in his room, where Quiboloy read to her a Biblical passage.
“He opened a Russian Bible because he cannot talk to me in English. And he said, I want you to read this verse in Russian. So, I opened this Bible and there was a verse. It’s a scripture about ‘to sacrifice your body,’” Voronina said.
“He was trying to ask me: are you ready to sacrifice your body? And he put his finger on the bed because we were sitting on the chair before the bed,” she added.
Voronina said she ran away and hid in a nearby garage and spent the night there. When she returned to her room, she was scolded by Roy for not respecting the “son of God.”
“They start to let me feel that I’m guilty. They realized that it’s too early for me. I’m not ready yet. I’m still not brainwashed that I can do it,” she added.
Davao City police chief Col. Hansen Marantan said Quiboloy sexually abused around 200 women, supposedly to have a thousand women and fulfill the biblical story of King Solomon who had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
Quiboloy categorically denied he sexually abused young women and forced other members to beg on the streets and raise money to fund his lavish lifestyle.
A stony-faced Quiboloy yesterday faced the Senate hearing, where he was confronted by his alleged victims who accused him of raping them under the guise of religion.
Quiboloy was given a chance by Hontiveros to respond to the allegations after all his alleged victims spoke out during the hearing.
But he gave blanket denials and invoked his right against self-incrimination.
“There is no truth to it. They are free to file criminal charges against me in court, which is the proper forum to face and answer them,” Quiboloy said.
Quiboloy also denied accusations from former church members that they were forced to sell food on the streets to raise money for him or else risk torture if they failed to meet their quotas.
“The Kingdom has no policy of begging for alms,” Quiboloy said.
He also denied the existence of the Angels of Death, the sect’s alleged self-styled liquidation squad.
“That is a lie. They are inventing things. I ask the accuser to file a case against me,” Quiboloy said.
In an ambush interview after the hearing, Quiboloy called the Hontiveros-led committee investigation “unfair.”
“This committee is not the committee to decide whether I am guilty or not. It should be the court of law,” Quiboloy said.
He lamented that only his alleged victims were allowed to testify and he was not allowed to bring his own witnesses.
“This is a trial by publicity,” Quiboloy said.
Licud said Quiboloy handpicked trusted members with backgrounds in military and security training to create the death squad, which was later utilized as a liquidation team to various KOJC locations nationwide.
In a chance interview after the hearing, Quiboloy called the Hontiveros-led committee investigation “unfair.” Meanwhile, the US government has not requested the extradition of Quiboloy, Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo told the Senate yesterday.
In another development, CIDG chief Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III said they are talking to social media platforms YouTube and Facebook to take down Sonshine Media Network International’s channel and page as the platforms are being used to protect fugitives from the Philippines and the US.
The Workers’ and Peasants Party yesterday asked the Commission on Elections to reconsider its decision to allow Quiboloy to run in the senatorial race — Marc Jayson Cayabyab, Mayen Jaymalin