Amalia Fuentes is on a quest to find closure amid the messy breakup of her 28-year marriage because of “another woman.”
“Now I’m strong enough to fight for… justice, as do women who find themselves in the same situation,” the former actress told The STAR yesterday, citing months of preparing herself “emotionally” to put an end to what she thought was a lifetime
commitment.
Fuentes, emboldened by five years of a “painful” experience, unapologetically admits she wants to “shame” her husband Joseph “Joey” Stevens and his alleged mistress, a certain Angie. Fuentes claimed the affair bore the couple a son, who is now three years old.
But the man wouldn’t even admit this, she said.
“I want to shame them because they showed complete disregard for decency,” Fuentes said, recalling the time she learned that her husband was openly seen with the woman, a Cebuana in her 30s said to come from a prominent family, in the country clubs where he has memberships.
Fuentes, a known taray queen, describes Stevens as a “male chauvinist pig” whose vanity led him to undergo facelifts and two hair transplants.
“What you need is a brain transplant,” the 65-year-old Fuentes told her estranged husband bluntly.
“He is the main reason why I stayed away from plastic surgery… and he’s not even in showbiz!” she exclaimed.
Most painful for her was finding out about her husband’s offspring with another woman.
“For a 75-year-old to sire a child (by another woman) is the height of irresponsibility,” she decried.
She described Stevens as a “wheeler and dealer” who has “no visible means of (providing) support” for his child.
“Basta kung saan siya puwede kumita ng kumomisyon (Wherever he can earn commissions),” said Fuentes, adding most of the money he made was during the Marcos years when he was a “crony.”
Stevens, she said, has not admitted to the affair or their child because of complications, given that, among other things, Angie is said to be married with two teenage kids.
“I hope for his sake that it’s not true because he has been denying it all this time,” Fuentes said.
Fuentes recalled that whenever she was told about the alleged affair, she would confront her husband, who in turn would confront the people who told her about it.
On one such confrontation, Stevens described the other woman as “regular” looking. “Of course no one could be more beautiful than you,” Fuentes quoted her husband as saying.
She initially had no inkling that her husband’s frequent “business” trips to Cebu were much more than that.
Last January, Fuentes told him she wanted to join him on his next visit, saying she had not seen much of the province.
“The next day, he just left without saying where he was going,” Fuentes lamented, adding her husband also cited his son with his first wife as a reason for his visits.
On her planned five-month vacation abroad – wherein she had wanted her husband to join her, but he refused – Fuentes confirmed the affair.
When she was in the States, she was ill for a long time, saying now the stress of the news may have contributed to her illness.
But now, she says she is over him. “I don’t love Joey Stevens anymore.”
Closure comes next, Fuentes said: “There are some legal aspects of our marriage that we have to work out.”
For now, Fuentes will seek divorce, as the two were married in the US, in order to protect her interests and those of their 24-year-old son.
But first, she needs Joseph to commit his “usual allowance” of support for them.
“I will (seek) all my options as the legal wife and seek justice as I am a wronged woman. I am the victim and there are laws to protect victims like myself,” Fuentes stressed, hinting at a warning that she’s ready to play hardball if that’s what he wants.