A female customer shared online her harrowing tale of sexual harassment by one of the staff of a hotel in Boracay she and her officemates were staying at.
She accused hotel employee Regie Guillermo on Twitter of filming her while she was taking a bath at the Wald’s Place Hotel at Boat Station 3 of the island.
She posted her story on July 30 and soon made rounds over 10,000 times on Twitter.
As of press time, her account suddenly went private.
The incident happened during a company team building, the guest recalled, and she was taking a shower after a night out for drinks when she felt something was wrong.
“As I was finishing up, I noticed that there was something weird with the sliding window of the CR. I approached it and as soon as I figured it was a phone, I cursed really loudly and tried to grab the phone but someone had already snatched it away,” she said.
“Great thing is I had a friend hanging out at our room. I screamed that someone was filming me while I was taking a bath and that she shouldn’t let anyone out of the transient house’s premises,” she added.
She also attached video clips of blurry CCTV footage where a man, whom she identified as “Guillermo,” could be seen performing perverted acts and him denying at the local police station.
Damage control
Facebook user Margarette Rona, who was introduced as one of the alleged victim’s colleagues, later confirmed this and re-posted details of the story on her account.
Rona added that they couldn’t file a case against Guillermo as they had to go to the municipality of Kalibo for it.
She further denounced the supposed corrective measure the management had on such offenders.
“You cannot deny this because my staff and one of your concerned staff said this and your manager admitted this when confronted. ‘Pinapa-stay lang po ng saglit at Bibigyan lang po namin ng pamasahe tapos paalisin na namin.’ Ginagago nyo kami. Is that the corrective measure you are so proud of?” Rona said.
Meanwhile, the management of Wald’s Place posted a lengthy statement on the matter which screenshots were shared before the Facebook page got removed.
The guests involved found this apology insincere after the management did some damage control.
While its Facebook page is now gone, the hotel’s accounts in major booking websites Agoda and TripAdvisor are still up.
Voyeurism
What the perpetrator allegedly did was an act of voyeurism or the practice of watching nudity or sexual activity to gain pleasure.
This is a possible violation of the Anti-Photo and Video Voyeurism Act of 2009 wherein one of the prohibited acts is:
“To take photo or video coverage of a person or group of persons performing sexual act or any similar activity or to capture an image of the private area of a person/s such as the naked or undergarment clad genitals, pubic area, buttocks or female breast without the consent of the person/s involved and under circumstances in which the person/s has/have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
The penalty for committing this violation is imprisonment from three to seven years and a fine between P100,000 to P500,000.