Due to the allegations made by Willie Revillame that ABS-CBN was behind the people who's accusing him of child abuse, Froilan Grate issued a statement through the FB group Para kay Jan-jan (Shame on you Willie Revillame!):This is to settle once and for all Mr. Willie Revillame’s allegations (and that of his supporters) that those who are against him are employees of ABS-CBN. While we deplore Mr. Revillame’s tactic of diverting the issue from that of child abuse incident on Willing Willie to that of being a network war, we feel there is a need to clarify and answer this issue to enable us to focus on the bigger issue at hand – that is, to end the exploitation of children for the sake of entertainment. The Facebook Page Para Kay Jan-jan (Shame on You Willie Revillame!), with more than 12,000 members in two weeks time, is a group of individuals who share two things – we believe that what happened on the March 12 episode of Willing Willie is a case of child abuse, and we believe that on our personal capacity we can do something to prevent this from happening again. We deplore being called cyber activist – this page was created to coordinate our efforts outside the virtual world. The creation of the page was not our goal, rather it was a means to achieve our goal. We may disagree on how we do things, but at the end of the day, we remember those two things that we share. As the one who started this page, I would like to make a full disclosure: I am not part of ABS-CBN or any other TV network in the country. Not before, not today and not in the near future. Those who doubt this could do a simple background search on Google. Ako po ay isang simpleng basurero lamang – taga turo sa mga kumunidad ng wastong pamamahala sa basura. For the past 8 years, I have been an environmental advocate and educator. I could have chosen to hid behind the anonymity of the web when I started this Page, but I have decided against it. The reason is not for me to become famous, I never imagined that this community would grow to be this big. (In fact, I look forward to going back to the simplicity of my old life after this is all over, when we have achieved ALL our goals.) I believe in transparency. I felt my friends would be more willing to look at and study the issue if they know it was me who was promoting it. For more than a week, I was the sole administrator of the Page. That would mean 3 to four hours of sleep per night, the reason why my friends were bugging me to delegate and get additional admins. I initially resisted for two reasons: 1) I was paranoid that I don’t know who to trust. The new admin could just delete and ban people from the group and that would be chaos. 2) With the number of hate mails I get every day, I don’t want to subject another person to the same ordeal (because if there would be other admins, I would want to publish their names too). However, managing a community of 8,000 people (then), plus a few trolls here and there, proved to be too much of a challenge that it already affected my health, and most importantly my full time day job. So I requested five people to be co-admins. They were chosen based on their commitment to the cause and their willingness to volunteer their time. It is no joke to read about a thousand posts and comments from members every day, especially since we all have our day jobs. And most importantly, they were chosen because I believe I could trust them. Their names were published publicly for all members to see. One would eventually sign up for an entry level position in one of ABS-CBN’s creative departments. She was honest about this and asked that I reconsider her admin privileges. I believe she is a member of the group on her personal capacity, and as creator of the Page, I still retain full control of the Page that I could terminate her admin privileges if she crosses the line or if I feel she represents other interests already. For the past 5 days, she and the rest of the admins have acted responsibly and I see no reason why anyone should be removed as admins. The rest of the admins have already disclosed their background, and I have to leave it at that. I would like to disclose further that I have no close friends or relatives who work in ABS-CBN or in GMA. In fact, I have friends who work in TV5. And though they cannot support this Page publicly, they have been supporting this advocacy in their own way (I don’t want them to get in trouble, so I would rather not share how they helped us). In the end, however, I believe this is not an issue of where you work. No matter who your boss is, you never lose your constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression. Because silence is betrayal. P.S. I would like to apologize to all the members of this community for any shortcomings that I have as administrator of this page. My apologies also to the other admins for this additional burden.
