Court Battle to Stop Film Showing: Chiong couple out to prove film depicted daughters’ fate

The parents of kidnap-rape victims Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong now have to prove that the story of the film “Butakal (Sugapa sa Laman)” was based on the incident involving their daughters so that they could stop the showing of the film.

The Supreme Court’s second division, in its December 13 ruling, ordered the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board to return to the producer the master copy of the film that it confiscated eight years ago based on the complaints of Dionisio and Thelma Chiong, parents of the victims.

The Chiong couple argued that the movie will defame their daughters and the family, so the High Court ordered also the MTRCB to resolve immediately the Chiong’s complaint against the showing of the film that allegedly depicted the 1997 rape-slay of their daughters. 

Film producer Federico Natividad has convinced the SC that the MTRCB erred in confiscating the film’s master copy beyond the prescribed 20-day preventive period.

But the SC denied Natividad’s plea to reverse the appellate court’s earlier finding that the film “Butakal” was a true-to-life depiction of the rape-slay of the Chiong sisters in Cebu.

The MTRCB had already allowed Natividad for the public showing of the film in August 1999 but gave it an “R-strictly for Adults” rating. It however recalled the film after the Chiong couple asked help from then president Joseph Estrada, whose private secretary is Thelma Chiong’s sister.

Before the movie’s September 8, 1999 showing, the Chiong couple objected and secured a temporary restraining order from the court against its exhibition. They asked MTRCB to stop the release of the movie both here and abroad, arguing that it would defame their daughters.

While the case was still pending in court, the Office of the President directed MTRCB to designate a committee to conduct a second review of the movie and determine if it was defamatory.

The Chiong sisters were kidnapped, raped and killed in July 16, 1997, allegedly by eight men who were tagged as scions of prominent Cebu families. One of them turned state witness, however, while the seven others were convicted for kidnapping and serious illegal detention with homicide and rape.

Some observers agreed there were similarities between the Chiong case and the film “Butakal:”

In the movie, the names of the two sisters are Cheery and Sandra Tan, and it also showed the eight actors forcibly dragged into a van the two sisters who had just came out of a mall one rainy night while waiting for their father to fetch them.

The ‘kidnappers’ in the movie also used two cars, one red and the other blue, and that they rented the van where they put the two sisters and raped them. These situations were also the same as in the record files of the case.

Rusia, one of the accused in the Chiong case who turned state witness and was subsequently acquitted, was the same name used in the movie of the suspect who got into a similar situation.

In the Chiong case, the body of one of the sisters, Marijoy, was found in a deep ravine in Tan-awan, Carcar; this was the same situation depicted in the movie.

One difference between the Chiong case and the movie was that the accused were convicted to death by lethal injection, contrary to the actual Chiong case where the accused were convicted to life imprisonment.  — Rene U. Borromeo/RAE