~ “Rape Bulaga!” That’s how a Filipino community activist calls the upcoming live performance of the entire cast of the Philippine noontime show Eat Bulaga in downtown Toronto in two weeks. The scheduled presentation on April 12 has renewed interest in the gang-rape of 14-year-old Pepsi Paloma in 1982. The budding starlet had accused Tito Sotto, Joey de Leon and Richie d’Horsie alias Richie Reyes of raping her. Sotto and De Leon remain with Eat Bulaga. The whereabouts of Reyes is unknown. In 1985, Pepsi Paloma was dead. Police authorities said the young woman had committed suicide. The ghost of the past continues to haunt Eat Bulaga’s main actors who are appearing in the Toronto show.
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TORONTO – The “error” had been apologized for. But the “wrong” – thinly admitted as if it was inconsequential – stabs us in the heart and pierces our humanity.
That’s because the confession was deeply insulting. To the victim first and foremost, and to all people who care for her, loved ones and strangers alike, who must not let this crime go unsolved and criminals scot-free.
It read: “We hope that you will not allow the error we have committed against you to stand as a stumbling block to that future which we all look forward to. We therefore ask you to find it in your heart to pardon us for the wrong which we have done against you”.
The “error” or “wrong” – as Vic Sotto, Joey de Leon and Richie d’ Horsie aka Richie Reyes put it so euphemistically –
was their rape of a frail, 14-year-old girl, a budding starlet named Pepsi Paloma, born Delia Smith to a Filipino mother and an American father. (Full story at: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/100369/was-pepsi-paloma-murdered).
Pepsi Paloma was drugged and repeatedly ravished by the three, one after another, in 1982, more than 30 years ago, when Sotto was 28 years old and De Leon, 36. Reyes’ birth year is unknown. Interestingly, in that same year, Sotto was actively sowing the field.
Sotto had relationships with his co-hosts in Eat Bulaga, who became his lovers, namely, Chiqui Hollman who joined in 1979 and quit in 1982; and Coney Reyes who entered in 1982 and left in the early 1990s. With Reyes, Sotto had a son, Vicco. It was also in 1982 when he married Dina Bonnevie. By 1983, she gave birth to Danica, and in 1984 to Oyo.
He also has another daughter, Paulina Sotto, with Angela Luz who was also with Eat Bulaga from 1989 to 1995.
But in hindsight, it was the year 1982 that matters. It was the year Pepsi Paloma was gang-raped. It was also the year that Sotto went in and out of love affairs in the easy comfort of the noontime program.
In recent years, the 59-year-old Sotto, a grandfather who’ll turn 60 next month, seems to have developed an appetite for women thrice his junior.
His current flame, Pauleen Luna, wasn’t born yet when the rape of Pepsi Paloma happened. In 1995, Luna was a child contestant at Eat Bulaga’s Little Miss Philippines. Now 24 and well-endowed, she’s one of the program’s dancers and will be coming for the Toronto show.
Six of the nine women Sotto had relationships with were his Eat Bulaga co-hosts. Three of them gave him two sons and two daughters. “I don’t know why women fall for me,” he told Ricardo Lo in an interview published in November 2002. He also said he’d marry again if he had “blinded” another woman.
The rape of Pepsi Paloma has been haunting the trio and Sotto’s older brother, Tito Sotto who, despite being elected to the Philippine Senate, has not lost his flair for comedy.
But the man could be deadly serious, as when he convinced (news accounts say “coerced” was the correct verb) the poor girl to withdraw her complaint while a gun sat in front of them as they talked. Her desistance thus freed the three rapists from a possible date with the electric chair.
There’s renewed interest in the case, particularly because many people feel justice has evaded the young Pepsi Paloma from the time she was drugged, raped and had gone dead (officially the police said she committed suicide three years after the sexual assault).
Two of the self-confessed rapists, Vic Sotto, and Joey de Leon, are having a live performance in Toronto on Saturday, April 12 at Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in downtown. (Video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4qsOxmJHZU&list=UUjYsgGZZAP7lpqJczW4z47g).
Tito Sotto will also be there, including cheater Wally Bayola, the 41-year-old father of five, whose steamy sex video with an Eat Bulaga dancer has gone viral in various web sites and is still steaming (as of this writing) in at least two.
People are already repulsed that the rapists and the sex marauder would have the gall to bring their mindless show in Toronto in the name of fun and make people pay for it at ticket prices ranging from $68. to $178.
There’s a suggestion to picket the show to let the current generation of Eat Bulaga fans know what the comedic trio of Vic Sotto, Joey de Leon and Richie Reyes had done to a poor girl way back in the Philippines. Did they have a role in her alleged suicide? Or was it cold-blooded murder to forever seal her mouth?
There’s also a plan to boycott it despite skepticism and disbelief in the rape case involving the Eat Bulaga mainstays.
A reader proposed notifying Canadian authorities of their background and the newspaper and online stories about them concerning Pepsi Paloma. Have they atoned for their sins that after her death, they went on their merry ways, particularly with women?
Meanwhile, a store owner in the Wilson-Bathurst area promptly took down the posters for the show that had been taped on the glass window after she learned about the rape by Sotto, De Leon and Reyes. The names and phone numbers of sponsors had been covered by yellow plastic tapes.
Did it mean that the sponsors were too shy to be identified with the show?
What show? asked a friend. As if you don’t know, it’s “Rape Bulaga”, says Ores Ting, a Toronto community activist.