How the unconditional love of two women set Hubert Webb free

In a 186-page decision dated Jan. 6, 2000, which came more than eight years after the Vizconde massacre took place, Parañaque Regional Trial Court Judge Amelita Tolentino convicted Hubert Webb, along with five others, of rape with homicide and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

 On Dec. 14, 2010, Webb, along with five men convicted of the crime, was acquitted by the Supreme Court of all charges upon finding that the prosecution failed to prove the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Seven justices voted to acquit, four against and four abstained.

In February 2016, Hubert, 47, married chef Cecille Perez, whom he met while he was in prison. They are now looking forward to a new beginning, and raising a family of their own.

This is their story.

This year, Hubert Webb, after suffering through many Good Fridays, experienced the most glorious Easter of his 47 years.

Six years after being released from the State Penitentiary, Hubert married a beautiful soft-spoken widow whom he met when she accompanied a friend — an avid Hubert Webb fan — to his jail cell.

“I also didn’t believe he did it, but I said to my friend, we’re gonna do it once lang, ha? Let’s go!” recalls Cecille. We meet after their honeymoon in a coffee shop in BF Parañaque, where Hubert once lived, and where the Vizconde massacre took place. With Cecille, Hubert walked in confidently into the coffee shop, his head unbowed. Some of the waiters would take a second look at him, but Hubert was not conscious at all of the occasional stares.

According to Cecille, she and her friend were not allowed to see Hubert in Bilibid as their names were not on the list of visitors.

But the friend persisted, and eventually Hubert, son of former senator Freddie Webb and his wife Elizabeth, and Cecille met.

But she was engaged to be married, and nothing developed between them beyond friendship. Besides, he was behind bars.

But it seems they were destined to be together. Cecille’s husband died in a car accident, and after Hubert walked out of prison following his acquittal, they resumed their friendship.

He was now free to love her, and she was free to love him back.

* * *

He pursued Cecille and proposed to her one moonlit night in 2014 in a beach resort in Batangas.

“You know you’re with the right person if you want to change for the better. You see yourself becoming a better human being because of that person you’re with,” Hubert tells me.

What else do you want to change about yourself, I ask him. 

“Ewan ko. I still have to figure myself out. Coming from jail is different. It is a different world for a while, you have to adjust to a lot of things. In jail, I had to be strong both emotionally and physically. I wouldn’t take anything from anyone. Not even food. Here and now, outside jail, you have to adapt to the fact that this is a new place again.”            

He had to learn to be more trusting, to believe in new beginnings. There was the stigma, the hate mail, and yet there were also fans and admirers who would stop him in the malls to have selfies with him.

“He had to learn to be more trusting, and to be...softer,” adds Cecille. She fell in love with him, she confesses, because “he was the most forgiving person in the world.” To her, he was the victim who lost what could have been the best years of his life in prison. And yet she says that when he was released, he was not vengeful or bitter.

Hubert and Cecille Webb: Her love has set him free.

* * *

Hubert had to win over not only Cecille’s only child, but her parents and strict brothers as well. A brother was the last to give his blessing to them, but it was a solid one.

For Hubert, the best thing about Cecille is that “She reminds me of my mom. I think that’s the best compliment I can give her.”           

Hubert’s mother Elizabeth Pagaspas Webb tirelessly and unceasingly knocked on the doors of those who had evidence — a receipt, a photograph — of her son’s innocence. She sought opinion makers to present her son’s case, evidence in tow. She would cook for a battalion every Sunday and bring a feast to Hubert in prison. Every Sunday, without fail. She never blinked in her love and belief in her son’s innocence.

“Cecille cooks really well, too. She takes care of me. She’s fair,” he says.

I ask them both to define what unconditional love is.

“It’s not expecting something in return,” Cecille answers in a heartbeat.     

“Yes. Because she’s gone through hell and back,” Hubert interrupts his bride and looks at her lovingly.

During their wedding day,  glowing in a Rosa Clara gown, she walked down the aisle to the tune of Con Te Partiro (Time to Say Goodbye), which was popularized by Andrea Bocelli, and which Hubert picked for the processional.

When I’m alone

I dream on the horizon

and words fail;

yes, I know there is no light

in a room where the sun is absent,

if you are not with me, with me.

But Cecille is now with him, and together they’re looking forward to the Easter of their lives.

 (You may e-mail me at [email protected].)