On Nov 29, Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) VP for Administration Fr. Nemesio Que, SJ released a statement saying that a student was abducted inside the north car park of the campus between 6pm and 6:30pm last Nov 21. He said the student, Bea Mata, had been released unharmed and even without her parents paying the PHP250,000 ransom demanded by the kidnappers.
However, Chief Superintendent Richard Albano, Quezon City Police District (QCPD) director, later said that “no kidnapping occurred.”
Related story: Ateneo student’s father recounts harrowing conversations with kidnappers
“The kidnapping happened, and it was NOT a scheme that was cooked up by daughter or any of her friends,” says Bea’s parents, Brian and Betsy. “We were in contact with police at Camp Karingal and with the Anti-Kidnapping Group in Camp Crame headed by Supt. Mar Desamito.”
In a statement released to Coconuts Manila, the parents said they are saddened that their daughter is being accused of lying about and staging her own kidnapping. “We have many people who can verify various aspects of the case — from family members, to the AKG officers, the military who helped us, the gas station workers, etc. All the police have to do is follow these leads. We are grateful that in fact the AKG is already deep into its investigation,” says Mata’s parents.
We are reprinting in full Bea Mata’s statement on what happened on Nov 21:
“My name is Beatrice Louise M. Mata, 20 years old, single and a resident of Quezon City, Philippines. I hereby make the following statement to the best of my knowledge based on the facts and actual events that transpired with regard to my kidnapping from the North Carpark inside the Ateneo de Manila University campus on Thursday, November 21, sometime between 6:30-7:00 PM.
“I left our house in Novaliches at around 5:00 PM and went to school to submit a paper for my 4:30-7:30 class which was earlier on (i.e., the week prior) called off by our professor given the University Service Awards, suspending classes from 1:30-6:00 PM. I got to school at around 6:30 (because of the heavy traffic), parked our black Hyundai Accent in the North Carpark (in a spot straight from the carpark entrance, in the middle; no cars were beside mine).
“There were very few cars parked at the time. I walked to Gonzaga Hall via Xavier Hall and EDSA Walk, submitted my paper in the mailbox outside the Fine Arts Program mailbox, went to the washroom near FAP then walked back to the parking lot.
“As I was approaching my car, I noticed that a smaller, light-colored car had parked beside it, but I didn’t find it suspicious. I unlocked my car and sat on the driver’s seat, but as I was reaching for the door (to close it) on my left, I see someone approaching me from behind my car. Thinking it was maybe a friend who followed me to the parking lot to surprise me, I didn’t act on his approach i.e., I didn’t close the door fast enough, giving him time to seize me as I was still on the driver’s seat.
“He was wearing a white shirt and possibly a cap, but I wasn’t able to take a good look at his face. I remember him trying to cover my eyes and my mouth, allowing me to bite part of his arm (to no avail). That was perhaps the time when I heard other voices in the car, leading me to think that there were at least four men involved. The car was still parked at this point. Someone put a black translucent bonnet over my head, allowing me to still see the lights inside the car indicating that perhaps the doors were still open.
“The men realized that the bonnet had been too translucent, risking my being able to identify any of them. They had been emptying my small gray canvas tote bag and had taken hold of my iPhone, the car keys (two sets– the original one and the spare I also had), my glasses, and my wallet which had roughly 2,000Php. The rest of the contents (which I remember) are as follows: a notebook, a black pen, a pocket wifi, the hard case of my glasses, a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and an umbrella.
“I also had with me my transparent file case containing papers and readings for my classes. After having emptied my bag, they used it to cover my head on top of the translucent bonnet, depriving me of all sight. I had later on confirmed that it was my bag given that its small size would fit my head and I was able to feel its material, its straps dangling by my neck.
“From the driver’s seat where they first tried to restrain me, I was transferred to the floor of the second row of the car through the small space in between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat. I was positioned on the floor of the car’s second row in such a way that my back was against the right side car door and my legs were stretched on the floor.
“They were still trying to restrain me, taking hold of my wrists and pushing my head against the back of the passenger’s seat. I said, “I can’t breathe” and they repeated, “Di raw makahinga, di raw makahinga,” and then the man who was sitting nearest me on the back seat of the car took hold of the top of my head and raised the bonnet and my bag only as high as my nostrils so I could properly breathe.
“Seconds later, my head was again fully covered. Based on the voices I had been hearing, their ages ranged from perhaps 30 to 40 years old. I had been panicking and resisting for the earlier minutes of the ordeal until one of them, supposedly the man in the passenger’s seat in front, started talking and asking (perhaps, demanding) me to calm down.
“He first asked me what my name was and whether I worked in Ateneo. I replied with my name, “Bea,” and said that I was a student. At this point, I could already feel the movement of the car. Perhaps we were already exiting the carpark, around ten to fifteen minutes after they had seized me. I had no idea where we were going given that my head was covered and I was on the floor of the car.
“As we were moving, the man who asked me questions reiterated two rules which I were to follow: 1) Don’t do anything that will force them to kill me, and 2) Follow everything they say because I was the only one who could save myself. He made me repeat it to him about three times until I got it right.
“He continued to ask me questions about my course, what I was doing in school, my parents, where they work, what their business was, who their clients were (none of which I knew), what car they drove and what the plate number was, where I live, how old I was, how many siblings I had — most of which I answered with hesitation but with complete honesty, given that I couldn’t risk lying because of what they could possibly do to me.
“He asked if my phone could possibly have a tracker, I said I thought it only worked with wifi. One thing the man had also kept on asking was where my laptop was, to which I replied that I didn’t have it. It seemed that it was one of the things they thought they could get their hands on given a victim like me, but it was one of the fortunate days when I didn’t bring my laptop. He had also asked me about my ATM card, or any credit card, but I told him that I didn’t have a bank account, which he said would make things more difficult for me.
“He was talking to me in English, perhaps because I had been panicking in English with ‘oh my god, oh my god’ and ‘what are you going to do to me, where are you taking me.’ I could tell his English was rather forced, i.e., it wasn’t his first language, given how he pronounced his words and committed grammatical errors, some of which had at some point been a cause for our misunderstanding and his consequent aggravation.
“To reiterate, there were at least four men in the car (two of them in the second row with me, one driving and one in the passenger seat) but this man who (I assumed because of the proximity of his voice) was seated on the passenger’s seat had been the only one addressing me. He had been attempting to calm me down, saying that they wouldn’t hurt me, that they just wanted money.
“I kept asking them how much they needed. He said it was up to me. I told them they could already get what they wanted from the bag, but they said it wasn’t enough. I kept asking what else they wanted, saying they could take the car, but he said they needed something liquid, i.e., cash.
“He insisted that I be the one to think of ways by which they could earn money. There were bouts of silence because they were waiting for me to give an answer, and the man started speaking again in an impatient tone, saying that I was prolonging the whole thing, that if I could just figure out a way to get them money, they would let me go.
“At this point, I heard a new and deeper voice echoing what the man had just said, “Ako rin, pagod na ‘ko eh.” I don’t think I heard that man speak again.
“They addressed each other as ‘panyero.’ Every now and then someone would slip and say one’s actual name and get called out for it. Some of the more specific names mentioned were ‘Oscar’ and ‘Bonbon,’ but whether they actually slipped or they were bluffing, I wasn’t sure.
“We were still mobile then, they were talking about going to a place, careful not to reveal any specific names so as not to give me a clue. I could tell we were approaching the place because we were slowing down and I could hear children’s voices outside, but when they stopped to ask if the place was open, I could hear a lady telling them that the place was already closed, so they decided to turn back.
“The man reminded me that it was up to me to think of ways by which they could earn money. I eventually thought about the event for my organization that we would be having the next day, on November 22. I said that maybe I could use it as an excuse to get money from my parents. They had also been asking me about my contacts, i.e., who I could possibly get money from, but I insisted that my parents were the only ones whom I knew could help me.
“The man asked me what my mother’s name was on my phone, and I said, “Mama.” A few minutes later, I hear a phone ringing and then my mother’s voice on speaker answering, ‘Hello? Hello?’ None of the people in the car had said anything. When the man ended the call, he asked me, ‘Do you recognize that voice?’ I said, yes, that it was my mother’s.
“I was handed my phone and said I should call my mother asking for money for the event. Before I could find her in my contacts, I had to ask the man what I was allowed to say. He then on devised a script for me to follow: he was my professor named “Dale” and I decided to borrow money from him for the event that I had the next day because I was too embarrassed to ask my parents, and my parents had to pay him back for what I owe him, and to consequently meet us.
“It took some time before we made the call, but when I finally did, my mother answered, and I merely told her: ‘Hi Mama. Can you go to school? I need money.’ She asked me, ‘Where?’ and then I said, ‘Xavier (referring to Xavier Hall inside Ateneo),’ and then she agreed and said that they were already in SM North EDSA. After that, she hung up.
“The man who was posing as my professor, the same man who had been talking to me, didn’t reprimand me for having veered away from the script. He did, however, ask to be dropped off somewhere. He bid me goodbye, assured me that the men in the car wouldn’t hurt me, opened the door, then left.
“But someone else came in and sat on the passenger seat where I assumed ‘professor Dale’ came from. Considering my head was against the back of the passenger’s seat, there were times when I could still feel pressure from it, as if someone had been sitting there.
“We were going around in circles and it became clear that the people in the car with me had merely been waiting for someone else’s orders because the driver had kept asking, ‘Nag-text na ba?’ They didn’t talk to me at first when ‘professor Dale”’left, and I had been keeping quiet.
“They did start to ask me, though, if I was okay, and I kept on saying that I was. They also kept asking what the plate number and the make of my father’s car was, leading me to think that we had been trailing my parents, that we were getting closer to them. There were times when they would receive a call from (whom I thought was) ‘professor Dale’ and they said that we were in the flyover before Katipunan, which made me think that we were to go back to Ateneo again and meet my parents there where I had asked them to come.
“On one of the occasions that ‘professor Dale’ called, he had asked to speak with me. He asked if I was okay and if the men in the car hurt me. I said I was, and that they didn’t. He also said that my father wasn’t cooperating, revealing that he had been in contact with him, but whether he was telling the truth or not, I wasn’t sure then.
“After the call ended, we were still mobile, I was still deprived of sight. The man who was sitting beside me had offered not long after to let me breathe properly again, for a longer period this time, maybe thirty to forty seconds. They would, every now and then, chat me up and remind me that they wouldn’t harm a hair on my head, and I would constantly thank them for it.
“They told me that my father would be calling, that he had asked to speak to me. When the time came, one of them handed their phone to me. My father only asked if I was okay, if the men hurt me, and asked me to pray and stay calm, and that they were doing everything they could to get me back. The phone was then taken from me. After what I assume with be a few exchanges with my father, the driver would say, Jeproks pala tatay mo.’
“At some point, their conversations became sketchy: ‘Bili ka nga nun, tsaka ng lighter. Wag mo kalimutan yung lighter.’ I thought they were merely planning to smoke cigarettes. One of the men in the car had opted to buy from somewhere. Before we stopped and he got out of the car, the driver said we would come back for him after ten minutes, and then we left.
“The driver said we couldn’t stay there ‘cause they were likely to get caught, perhaps from illegally parking. We went around and stopped somewhere, and the driver asked one of the men who had a cell phone to set a timer for ten minutes. The driver was rather impatient, as he kept on asking, ‘Ten minutes na ba?’ to which one of the other men replied, ‘Four minutes palang,’ ‘seven minutes palang.’
“When the ten minutes were up, we started moving again and perhaps went back to the place where we left the guy who bought whatever it was he was buying. The driver realized that he wasn’t there, though, and he was getting more impatient, and decided to go around again. When we went back for the guy the second time, I heard one of the men saying, ‘Ano ba yan, may kasama pang babae.’
“It took a while before the guy who bought things got in the car again, and he was addressed with curses for perhaps having risked our being seen after circling the same place for a number of times. We would later on stop somewhere and I could hear and smell something boiling from the passenger’s seat of the car.
“They were smoking something but it didn’t smell like cigarettes.
“I felt something fall in between my legs, I thought it was a rolled up piece of tissue or paper. I offered it back to the men sitting nearest me, and felt one of the men’s leg hairs which made me think that perhaps he was wearing shorts. I could also feel that he was wearing slippers because of how he adjusted his feet by my legs on the floor.
“At some point, they said that we were running out of gas. They asked me how far and how long two bars could still get us and I said I didn’t know how to tell. They started getting a little irritated again, saying it was my car and that I should know, but I wasn’t an experienced driver. The driver then asked how much money the men had and one of them said, ‘200 lang,’ which made me think that ‘professor Dale’ took with him the money from my wallet alongside my phone.
“They were saying how tired and hungry they were, and also asked me if I was hungry and I said I was, a little. They said they could buy pandesal or something of the like to feed me, but considering they seemed to only have 200Php left, they decided to use it for gas because they weren’t sure how much longer the night was going to be, how long it would take before they got what they wanted, before they could let me go.
“The driver asked me how to open the gas tank. I said it was on the left side on the floor of the driver’s seat, that you had to pull it to open the gas tank. He seemed to have misunderstood me because he couldn’t figure it out and then I could hear the windshield wiper on. He began accusing me that I wasn’t telling the truth and I began reiterating my instruction, and then one of the men who was sitting beside me said that the driver just didn’t understand my instruction but that I was telling the truth, and the driver finally (at some point) figured out how to open the gas tank. They began restraining me again to perhaps make sure no one from the gas station would see me on the floor of the car or would detect any movement.
“The driver, at some point, thanked me, saying if not for that night, he wouldn’t have learned how to drive. I wasn’t sure whether he was telling the truth or not but there had been a lot of times when he would be constantly clutching for the hand break, where he would abruptly step on the break, where he would be going fast and the men from the backseat would warn him to slow down, knowing that it would perhaps be more of a hassle if we got into a car accident in the middle of having kidnapped me.
“They were still waiting for orders from whoever they had been talking to on the phone whether they would let me go or not. Their cell phones had started to run out of battery, as well. Given that we were still running low on gas (we didn’t know how far two bars would take us), it seemed that the more pressured they felt to get things done, to finally get what they wanted before gas and battery completely ran out.
“One of the things they kept repeating was, ‘Onting tiis na lang, Bea, tapos iiwan ka na namin.’ I don’t remember there being a clear point where they got an order to release me, but they had been apologizing, ‘Pasensiya na, Bea, nagkamali lang kami,’ and went on to say how the operation was ‘sablay.’
“They had been looking for places to park and leave me, but what their criteria had been for a place, I wasn’t sure. They had been saying, though, that we were in Sauyo, relatively near Novaliches where I had told them I lived. They already said that they would leave me with the car, and after that I could drive myself and go home.
“They told me to forget about that night. They said if they ever see this on the news or anything of the sort, they could just as easily get back to me, because they had an eye in Ateneo. One of their instructions before they left was that I should wait twenty minutes before I could leave, perhaps giving them time to get away.
“They said that they would have someone taking watch for twenty minutes, and that if I got up from the floor before the twenty minutes was up, they would shoot me. I asked where we were and one of them replied with, “Basta, pwede ka nang umuwi pagkatapos ng twenty minutes, ikaw na magmaneho.” I asked whether I could ask for directions from anyone in sight when I get out, and they said I could.
“The strap of my ID was still around my neck, but my ID itself wasn’t there, so I asked them if they were going to take it, but they instead got my hand and put it there, including the key to my room that I also put in the strap. I had also asked for my glasses which they had earlier removed, and they also put it in my hand.
“I heard the doors open not long after and they got out all at once, and I was left in the car alone, in silence.
“I counted twenty minutes with my fingers, still with the bonnet and the bag over my head, not moving from my position on the car floor. I wasn’t relying on my accuracy when it came to counting twenty minutes, so when I got to the twentieth minute, I decided to add two more minutes just to be sure. During that twenty second minute, I heard someone from outside the car who asked, “May tao ba sa loob?” and I took it as a sign for me to remove the bag and the bonnet.
“I looked at my surroundings and saw a Caltex perhaps 25 meters away from where the car was parked and a tricycle stand in between. The first thing I did was transfer to the driver’s seat, lock the car (since the men left it unlocked), and looked for the car keys.
“Various cards and papers were scattered on the floor, remnants of their rummaging. The keys weren’t in the backseat, nor were they on the passenger seat or near the cupholders; I found them on the dashboard, where the speedometer, etc. are.
“Both keys were there, the original and the spare. I started the car but the steering wheel was locked and there were lights in the dashboard I didn’t understand and had never seen before. The gas wasn’t the problem because there were still two bars left. I tried starting it a couple of times again but the wheel remained locked. I took the keys and stepped out of the car, locked it and walked towards the tricycle drivers. ‘Hi kuya, nasaan po ako.’ ‘Ma’am, sa Pasig po.’
“Pasig?
“I said my car had broken down, and they offered to push it to Caltex. They walked back with me to the car, I got in and started it again, and this time the wheel loosened and I felt I was able to drive it again. ‘O ma’am okay naman pala eh, baka nag-overheat lang. Ipahinga niyo na lang tsaka tubigan doon.’
“I parked it inside the gas station, rushed to the convenience store and asked if they had a landline I could use, and they did. There were two attendants there, one guy and one girl. The guy was sitting on a circle table outside while the girl manned the cashier inside. I asked the girl where I was again, and she confirmed that I was indeed in Pasig, along Manggahan.
“I also asked her the time, where she said it was maybe around 2:20-2:30 in the morning. I used their landline, called the house twice, and no one picked up. I asked if I could call a cell phone, since one of the other few numbers I memorized was my mother’s, but the guy attendant said it was only for landline use. I then tried to call my grandmother’s house, and she picked up.
“I wasn’t sure whether she knew that I had gone missing, so I kept calm while talking to her. She didn’t seem panicked at all when I told her it was me, only concerned that I had been calling so late. I told her the same thing I told the tricycle drivers, that the car had broken down, and that I was in Pasig.
“She asked me if I was alone, and I said I was. I then asked her to check whether my parents were in our house, considering we lived in the same compound. She said there were no cars in the garage. I then asked if she could call my sister or the maid from our house. I told her to merely keep me on the line while she called them. The girl attendant at the gas station handed me one of their receipts with their address and their number.
“My sister then came to the phone, also attempting to remain calm in the presence of our grandmother but I could tell she knew what had happened. She asked me if I was okay, if I’d eaten, if I was alone, all of which I said with a yes.
“As it turns out, she was also speaking to my mother on her cell phone, so she had me on the landline, and she had our mother on her cell phone. I asked her to have my parents pick me up there. I relayed to her my exact location and the number she could call based on the gas station receipt I had.
“I sat with the guy attendant in the table outside, he offered me coffee but I said I didn’t have any money. I had been waiting for my father’s car to arrive but after what was perhaps twenty minutes, I saw a car slowing down into the gas station.
“As they were drawing closer to the convenience store, I saw my father and instantly felt relieved. He got out of the car and I walked toward him, embraced him and cried.”
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