The Blind Item: "Trouble In Paradise"
Published as is from Scandal Sheet, a section in the political pages of The Manila Standard, February 2004.
"There is a fly in the ointment in what is generally perceived to be wedded bliss of a very popular showbiz couple. The husband found out that her [sic] angelic wife, a scion of an old haciendero family, suffers from kleptomania.
"It was only recently that he was shocked to learn, after being told by an executive of a ritzy Makati department store, that his wife was caught shoplifting.
"The guy immediately proceeded to the store, paid double the amount involved (which were for small items really) and asked the management to clamp down on the incident.
"But the incident was repeated several times. The embarrassed husband hired a security guard to look after the wife. The guard was instructed to watch discreetly but closely if the wife shoplifts and pay for the item without creating a fuss.
"The husband has confronted the wife about this malady and the wife had agreed to undergo psychotherapy in St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon City. The latest word is the wife is now seeing a shrink regularly.”
This “blind item” from the daily broadsheet The Manila Standard would then be picked up by every kind of rumormonger and, through cellphone text messaging, spread quite rapidly.
But more alarming was the way the blind item would be written in the texts. Now no one bothered to hide its subject. It just went ahead and flat-out identified the person.
The angelic wife, scion of an old haciendero family, was identified as Lucy Torres-Gomez.
ABS-CBN PICKS UP. The “Lucy Torres-Gomez shoplifting incident” grew even louder when shows and personalities from ABS-CBN picked up on the chatter.
The showbiz-oriented ABS-CBN show Ek! Channel began running a story about the chatter in January 2005, complete with a reenactment.
ABS-CBN newscasters Ces Drillon and Karen Davila also picked up on the rumor.
Ces was supposed to be doing her own investigating and began asking around, while Karen was said to be keeping the “surveillance tape” of the whole “shoplifting and arrest” scene that happened in a “ritzy Makati department store.”
This establishment was eventually identified as Rustan’s Department Store.
The Buzz was also getting ready to launch its own coverage, what with the rumor growing even bigger in cyberspace through web-forum discussions and emails, which came complete with a “conversation” between Lucy and the guards who “caught” her “shoplifting.”
And in these emails and forums, the rumor began sounding more believable because the supposed story sources were no less than “people from ABS-CBN.”
For nearly a year, the rumor took on a life of its own.
Meantime, nothing was heard from Lucy Torres-Gomez.
She kept very quiet, she would later explain, in the hopes that such an ugly rumor would die a natural death.
But, it did not. So, Lucy finally spoke.
And when she did, she chose to do so with YES! Magazine, then the highest-circulating, monthly entertainment glossy in the country. For several hours, she sat for an interview with YES! editor-in-chief Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon and guest writer Conrado de Quiros.
When the article appeared in YES! March 2005, it carried the title “Lucy Torres—The Celebrity As Victim.”
(Note: YES! Magazine, after an 18-year run that began in April 2000, closed shop in May 2018, when the digital world began to take over the local print world.)
FACING FACTS. It was in April of 2004 when Lucy—then a quiet, simple, non-showbiz probinsiyana from Leyte, who just happened to be the wife of the very popular actor Richard Gomez—first heard of the rumor from her friend Kris Aquino.
Kris told Lucy that the nasty rumor going around was that Lucy was a kleptomaniac.
Kris actually suggested that Lucy confront the source of the rumor, The Manila Standard, and study her legal options.
Lucy made the decision to simply ignore the chatter.
As Lucy explained it to YES!: “I would not assume that by coming out [with a denial], everybody who believed the rumor will really say na, 'Hindi pala totoo.' There will always be those who would believe otherwise. I decided I would not dignify the rumor with an answer.”
More prodding by friends, and even by husband Richard at a later stage, failed to push Lucy into action. She kept her anger to herself.
Until January 2005 came, when she saw the Ek! Channel do a story on her alleged shoplifting bust.
Lucy could not believe that the show was running the story constantly with claims that it had a surveillance tape as proof.
That is when she moved.
FINDING OUT WHO STARTED IT. Husband Richard did his own investigating and went after the people he thought could be spreading the rumor.
The first ones the couple confronted were newscasters Ces Drillon and Karen Davila, very big names on TV.
Richard’s friend, JV Ejercito who was then San Juan mayor, had named Ces as the person who first told him about Lucy being a “kleptomaniac.”
When Richard and Lucy confronted Ces about Mayor JV's revelation, the broadcaster admitted talking to the mayor about the rumor but said that she was just checking with him if the rumor about Lucy was true.
She thereafter sent text messages to Lucy saying that all she heard about Lucy had proven untrue.
Lucy did not reply.
She told YES! that she did not want to dwell on Ces too much, and that she had actually absolved her, convinced that Ces was not the source of the ugly rumor.
The only fault of Ces Drillon, Lucy said, was that she actively picked up the rumor and actively told others about it.
Next, Richard asked Karen Davila to show them the “surveillance tape” that was supposed to show damning proof of Lucy’s “shoplifting and arrest” by Rustan's guards.
Karen answered that she had no such tape, and claimed further that she, too, had become a victim of rumormongers.
The Buzz, meantime, never got to do its story on the "shoplifting." Kris Aquino—one of the main hosts of the show—dared the show’s staff to show her the “surveillance tape” that showed “Lucy’s shoplifting incident.”
Kris told them: “If you can produce the tape, kahit ako pa ang mag-voice over.”
The staff was unable to produce any tape.
Ultimately, Richard went to the original source of the rumor, The Manila Standard, and asked its editor-in-chief, Julie Yap Daza, to tell him who wrote that blind item.
He said he wanted to hold the writer accountable for his or her "facts."
“She answered me, but I did not believe her," Richard said of Julie Yap. "Sabi niya, she doesn’t know who wrote it."
Shaking his head, Richard added, "I think it was really irresponsible of Julie to say that talaga.”
Richard narrated his encounter with Julie Yap Daza in the same YES! March 2005 interview with his wife Lucy.
POLITICALLY MOTIVATED. Also in the same YES! issue, Lucy's and Richard's manager, Douglas "Tito Dougs" Quijano, spoke.
He said outright that the motive behind the rumor was "politics."
Douglas articulated it thus: “They want to destroy Lucy now, this early, because she is Richard’s best campaigner.”
At the time of the rumor, Richard was planning to run for the coming senatorial race.
“They want to weaken Richard by weakening his best asset. This is politically motivated,” Douglas said, his usual affability absent.
He pointed out the curiousity that the blind item never appeared in the showbiz section of the newspaper: “Nasa political page siya ng Manila Standard!”
Lucy agreed: “The rumor circulated mainly in the upper crust of society.”
The same crust that, YES! opined, wheels and deals and finds pleasure in deciding who sits at the Palace.
Failing to find the culprit, Lucy issued a challenge. Show me—she said to the tabloids and the Ek! Channel, and to all individuals with the “surveillance tape” that would incriminate her—show me proof that I am a kleptomaniac.
Otherwise, forever hold your peace.
AFFIRMING LUCY’S GOOD NAME. Rustan’s Department Store, responding to a query made by GMA-7’s S-Files, took the trouble to isse an official statement signed by its president, Bienvenido Tantoco Jr.
“It has come to our attention that there are rumors circulating that Mrs. Lucy Torres-Gomez was caught shoplifting in Rustan’s.
"We would like the public to know that there is no truth to this and that Mrs. Lucy Torres-Gomez is a customer of good standing and is welcome in any of our establishments at anytime.”
After all is said and done, Lucy said, she was saddened by how easy it is for anyone to make up a story and mask it as truth.
She has had to learn, Lucy added, that being married to a public figure, something ugly like this was bound to happen.
Lucy told YES!: “I guess nothing just really prepares you for it when it really happens already. At the back of my mind, it has always been there.”
She says she just has to prepare herself for more of something like this in the future. But she says that, next time, she will not be passive nor will she hesitate.
She has accepted that rumors, chatter, and untruths do not just die on their own. Someone has to meet them squarely. Or even, when the person can, blast them out of existence.
SOURCE: March 2005 issue, YES! Magazine
NOTE: PEP.ph, or the Philippine Entertainment Portal, like YES! Magazine, belongs to the Summit Media Group. Although the publications are a few years apart, PEP.ph and YES! Magazine have the same founding editor-in-chief, Jo-Ann Maglipon.