AS THE “most beautiful woman in the universe” was crowned in Metro Manila, somewhere in Cagayan de Oro a young woman was in shackles for taking part in what has been dubbed as “the most horrifying abuse and sexual assault of a young child.”
Fact is stranger than fiction and Liezyl Margallo, the 23-year-old, is all the facts from which bizarre fiction is borne out of.
While there was so much debate on having pageant interpreters, the NBI of Central Visayas persistently combed tourist-filled Malapascua Island in Cebu to find Liezyl who then called herself as Gina.
On paper, Liezyl was arrested “for sexually abusing and torturing at least nine young children, one of whom died.” But her narrative shadows how twisted this person has become.
In 2015, the internet was ablaze with a snuff movie that was said to have featured the “most horrifying abuse and sexual assault of a young child”.
It was titled “Daisy’s Destruction” and some thought of it as an urban myth. But “Daisy’s Destruction” was for real and was a series of three videos that showed a masked woman torturing and sexually abusing a toddler. It was hosted by a site that specialized not just in child pornography but also in torturing and abusing children and some called it as the worst site on the web. Eventually, the website owner, Lux, was caught, and so was Peter Scully, the producer of “Daisy’s Destruction” who was Liezyl’s 52-year-old lover.
Before the arrest, Liezyl was just one of the two unidentified women who wore masks while torturing children in the grotesque videos.
In one video, a 12-year-old, ended up dead when kitchen knives were inserted inside her private parts. These sadistic child pornography videos were sold at US$10,000 per live streaming or P500,000. If they only had five clients, Scully and Liezyl could easily have P2.5 million or so.
Unmasked, the mugshots of Liezyl shows a sweet, almost innocent, face. But the charming countenance is the subject of 16 warrants of arrests and all for human trafficking. As she is only 23, her adroitness in eluding arrest may have been practiced for years. It took the coordination of Australian and Philippine officers to finally pin her down while on escort duties in Malapascua Island.
A day after her arrest, Liezyl is said to have expressed remorse and claimed that she was also a victim of child abuse by her mother. It must have been cathartic for her to see other children scream in pain but that could not be anything but sick and retarded. It might have been music to hear muffled screams of a toddler hung upside down while being whipped and then dripped with hot wax not just on the body but onto the toddler’s private parts. But regret for Liezyl is not seeking forgiveness but moving out of the Philippines and starting all over in another country. No apologies, just moving on. This is something that she must’ve learned from her lover and mentor Peter Scully who have avoided arrest in Australia for fraud.
From Australia, Scully moved on to Indonesia and then to the Philippines. A few days after his arrest, Scully was also quoted saying that he was allegedly “sexually abused when he was child growing up in Victoria, Australia” and that he also felt “remorseful” about what he did to the children. Just like Liezyl was.
While reading Liezyl’s story, one cannot help but ask where society has gone wrong for her? Was it the lack of education? The unending cycle of poverty? Drug abuse? Lack of guidance from her elders? From the church? But she also brings to mind the suggestion of lowering the age of criminality from 15 to 9 years old. Would such move really deter young minds from becoming criminals? From becoming like Liezyl Margallo?
