MISAMIS Oriental assistant provincial jail warden Francis Sarangay on Monday said the suspects charged with parricide had to be isolated and transferred to another detention facility to keep them safe from the inmates, this paper learned Thursday.
Sarangay even said that everyone wanted to keep them from being harmed so they have to be split up from others including their supposed cult leader Cresanto Ercilla.
The cultists were under threat. They needed to be separated from the others. Everybody wants to have a piece of them, according to Sarangay.
"Practically all of the PDLs (Persons Deprived of Liberty) are afraid for their safety once they arrived here at the provincial jail," said Sarangay.
Ercilla and followers were moved to the Misamis Oriental provincial jail facility 10 days after they burned their 75-year-old clan matriarch Teofila Camongay Cabusas in a cult ritual in the village of Baliwagan in Balingasag town on August 26.
Ercilla and his 10 followers – eight of them his relatives who were mostly much older than him – were charged with parricide.
Aside from Ercilla, named as respondents in the parricide case are the following:
Cabusas’ children Nicolas, Rosalina, Merlinda, and Jocelyn Ercilla (Cresanto’s mother)
grandchildren Rochel and Romeo Ercilla, Reymer Carno, and Charlie Cabusas
Jocelyn’s partner Jeramil Rotula and his brother Jesser
The police on September 5 handed over the 11 cultists on orders from regional Judge Jeoffre Acebido.
Sarangay said some of the inmates became anxious at first when they learned that Ercilla’s group would be transferred from a detention facility in Balingasag.
At first, they feared Cresanto because it was reported that he was cruel and violent while in detention in Balingasag, according to Sarangay.
“But once they were here, the inmates who became aware of what they did virtually want to kill them, So, we were forced to separate them from the rest,” Sarangay said.
"That's our usual practice here for a dangerous group of criminals like them. We can't afford to jail them together as their ideas or whatsoever they have in them might multiply for they could influence each other," Santos said.
Sarangay said Cresanto and company have yet to undergo arraignment of their parricide case, owing to their seeming incapacity to look for a private lawyer.
"They might have no lawyers yet who are interested to handle their case which has since become known around the world because of its unusual nature," Sarangay said.
However, Sarangay said that except for the two (the victim's children) who seemingly lost their sanity, all of the suspects are now cooperative and manageable to handle they could even hold a conversation with the MOPJ personnel.
"No more chants and ritual dances. I guess, they committed the gruesome crime as a result of lengthy fastings as they held their religious worships without eating and proper sleep. It might be a product of hallucination," Sarangay said.
"But even if the complainant will try to recant her testimony as most of the suspects are her relatives too, there's no escaping for them to face punishment because somebody got killed," added Sarangay.
Misamis Oriental jail warden Robert Roy Bahian said some of the cultists were suffering from tuberculosis.
“Swab tests cleared them of COVID-19 infections, but a medical examination showed that two of them have TB,” Sarangay said.
He said the two inmates with lung problems were assigned to one prison cell just like Ercilla and one of his followers who were the most threatened of the cult members.
Prison Guard III officer Paul Santos said that they were all unvaccinated as PBCM followers and missionaries are exempted from being vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus as they're "trained to be spiritual healers" based on Philippine Benevolent Christian Missionaries Association, Inc. (PBCM) spiritual Divine words by the group's late Divine Master Tomas Eugenio Sr.
The PBCM is a breakaway of the Ecleo political dynasty’s Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA) in the Dinagat Islands in the Caraga region.
Its late founder, Tomas Eugenio Sr., was seen as the embodiment of the Holy Spirit by his followers.
Eugenio’s son Charlito, the present PBCM leader, has disowned Ercilla’s group after the murder, saying they strayed from the group’s teachings.
Ercilla claimed to be possessed by Eugenio’s spirit and managed to convince his relatives, including his mother, that he was their new spiritual guru. His murdered grandmother, a loyal Eugenio follower, refused to bow down to him.
A female nurse had already arranged with jail warden Bahian to subject all of the eleven suspects to vaccination procedure on Thursday, September 22.
"The four female suspects have already agreed to be vaccinated on Thursday, and we're optimistic that the rest will get the vaccine jab too on the same day. That was the order of jail warden Bahian," said the nurse, who requested not to mention her name.
