A ringside seat in a showbiz marital spat!

By now you must have read news reports about the short visit of former screen idol Amalia Fuentes in Cebu to face an annulment charge filed by her estranged husband Joey Stevens. I’m no stranger to showbiz personalities since I was born into a family of theater owners but this is the first time I met an actress who was a screen idol way back in the 50’s and 60’s. She was our version of Elizabeth Taylor. At the age of 66, signs of her age have begun to show. However, she has transmuted from screen idol, into a screen icon. Amalia Fuentes, after all, still has a bevy of fans, many of them from the generation of our parents. 

But as we wrote earlier, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!” and that’s exactly what the Cebu media got yesterday in the Sala of Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Teresita A. Galanida of Branch 56 in Mandaue City. When Amalia Fuentes eyeballed her 75-year-old husband Joey Stevens for the first time as she entered the courtroom she immediately held to his face her fist wrapped around a subpoena coming from a certain Evangeline Ignacio for estafa and served it to Joey Stevens.

In court, she openly accused him of infidelity for having an alleged affair with a Ms. Angie A. Sierra whom he supposedly sired a son, named Justin. Amalia cried out, “It was the shock of my life when I heard about the affair. I have put a roof on top of your head Joey and this is the reward I get?”

We have heard about this affair from the rumor mills. In fact, it was already in national news and gossip columns. But it was the first time that the name appeared in public in the courtroom.

The big question in everyone’s mind was, why was this case brought before the Mandaue RTC? It turned out that Joey alleged that he was already a resident of Mandaue City, which was questioned by Amalia Fuentes. In all these verbal tirades, Joey Stevens remained passive, keeping only to himself, stooping on the bench.

What got Amalia’s ire was that the annulment charge filed by Steven’s lawyer Rolindo Navarro (I remember this fellow quite distinctly) already put her name as Amalia Amador Mulach. Before Judge Galanida, she pleaded, “I got hurt when Joey called me in his pleading Amalia Amador Mulach, when I have always carried the family name Stevens with honor and dignity. I am still Mrs. Joey Stevens whether you like it or not Joey, even if you already have another Mrs. Stevens!”

Sensing a long drawn court battle, Judge Galanida asked if the two could reconcile or whether she could forgive Joey. Amalia responded, “But your honor, how will he resolve the problem of his mistress and son?” But Judge Galanida still insisted that the estranged couple should talk together as a sort of compromise settlement. Hence everyone inside the courtroom was requested to go out and only Amalia with her daughter Anna Liza a.k.a. Liezl and son Gerard and Joey Stevens stayed inside the courtroom.

We have no idea of what transpired inside but an hour later, the public was allowed to go inside where Judge Galanida ruled that the two have agreed to file a legal separation in a Manila Court. When that was done, the case of annulment that Joey Stevens filed in Mandaue would be dropped. I call this swift Justice. It could only come from a judge who knew the futility of the case and would rather have this case remanded to the court in the proper venue. Judge Teresita Galanida was the prosecutor of the celebrated Chiong murder case. I didn’t know that she was elevated into the Judiciary and was assigned in Dumaguete. Thank God that we still have judges whose probity is without question.

As we left the courtroom, we proceeded to the Waterfront Hotel where Amalia Fuentes opened her heart to me as if we were old friends. She ridiculed her husband saying, “Do you know I have a picture of Angie’s parents? I was very shocked to see that my Joey is very much older than them! At this age, we should be preparing for our soul, not pretending to be young like Joey who had two major facelifts, two major eyelifts and two major hair transplants. All these are nothing but vanity, yet he still looks very old. Look at me, I have never done anything to my body. God gave us our bodies and fixing them to make us look beautiful is nothing but vanity.”

Amalia Fuentes added this note, “Joey is the kind of person who courts rich women so he could live an easy life and this has even rubbed off onto his own son Joseph Steven who lives with a much older woman from a rich Manila clan who is also residing in Cebu.” I guess this would be the end of this coverage in the sense that this court battle will continue in a Manila Court. But at least, Cebu media got a ringside seat in this showbiz marital spat.