2 Kidapawan City reporters face child porn raps

KIDAPAWAN CITY — Two radio reporters in Kidapawan surrendered voluntarily to the police and posted bail for their temporary release after a court ordered their arrest for having used pornographic images of minors on the station's Facebook news page.

Officials of the Cotabato Provincial Police Office and the Police Regional Office-12 told reporters on Thursday that the reporter-manager of Brigada station in Mindanao, Eva Molina, and her subordinate reporter, Robert Charles Encio, yielded on Wednesday to the Makilala Municipal Police Station in nearby Makilala town when they learned that a court had issued warrants for their arrest for a child pornography photo and voyeurism offense.

It was the parents of both minors who filed the criminal cases against Molina and Encio.

City police officials and managers of three radio stations in Mindanao said the case stemmed from the Kidapawan Brigada station’s post bearing sexually explicit images of adolescent male and female partners on its official Facebook news page last month, sparking public outrage.

Reporters were baffled why Molina and Encio surrendered to the Makilala MPS in Makilala town in Cotabato and not to the police office in Kidapawan City, the capital of the province and where the Brigada station is located.

The lawyer-mayor of Kidapawan City, Joseph Evangelista, was among the local officials and child welfare advocates who had reacted negatively on the issue that precipitated the criminal cases against Molina and Encio, now both temporarily out on bail.