Estranged husband of Veloso’s recruiter wants wife to stop using his surname

NABUA, Camarines Sur–The estranged husband of Maria Kristina Pasadilla Sergio, the recruiter of Mary Jane Veloso, asked his former wife to stop using his surname to protect his family and their six children.

Robert T. Sergio, 47, who hailed from Iriga City and now living with his five children in Barangay Paloyon here, said he had been estranged to his wife Kristina, who hailed from this town, for ten years now.

“I don’t want her (Kristina) to use my surname now and use her surname Pasadilla instead,” Sergio said.

Sergio feared his children would be bullied because of the negative reports involving Kristina. His said his eldest child is 25 years old while the youngest is a 10-year-old son.

He called on Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to help ensure that his family would not suffer any backlash from Kristina’s involvement in the case of Mary Jane Veloso, who was believed to be a victim of human trafficking when she went to Indonesia as a domestic worker but was instead caught, jailed and sentenced to death after illegal drugs were found stashed in her luggage.

Sergio said Kristina was also a former overseas Filipino worker (OFW) who, after two years abroad, returned to the Philippines but only to abandon him and their children.

He said Kristina made her first trip abroad to Dubai in 2004 with the help of his parents who mortgaged the rice farm of his maternal grandmother for P80,000 to pay for her job placement.

He said Kristina stayed for two years in Dubai but she was not able to send back enough money to redeem the mortgaged property, until they sold it when his father got sick and later died.

Sergio said that when Kristina came back from Dubai, she opted to stay in her sister’s house instead of returning to their home, both of which are located in Barangay Paloyon.

He said his wife told him she did not love him anymore and wanted out of the marriage.

He said he had no information of her activities as he briefly saw her in Nabua only twice – first in 2012, when she visited her hometown with several companions, and in December last year, when she stayed for three days in her sister’s house.

Sergio spoke of his own financial hardship raising children by himself. His own house, he said, is heavily mortgaged and he has not been able to pay his amortizations for a long time now.

Sergio said he graduated from a two-year technical course on general radio operator while Kristina graduated cum laude in Bachelor of Science in Management and Technology at the Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges (CSPC) in this town in 1989.

They were married also in 1989 and both worked at the Provincial Capitol of Camarines Sur in the same year. He worked for the province for eight years and Kristina for 13 years.

After Kristina was terminated from the provincial capitol, she worked for CSPC for a while before she left for Dubai, he said.

He said he knew that Kristina has now been living in with another man in Nueva Ecija as one of their children, a 20-year-old son, is in fact working in a farm in the same province.

He said wanted his son to come home now but he was told that his son’s employer has yet to pay him his salary.

According to Sergio, he could not force his son to come home as he himself could barely make both ends meet since he has no permanent work and has only been doing odd jobs in the neighborhood drying palay or painting houses.

Sergio said he did not know at first about his estranged wife’s involvement in Veloso’s case as he has no access to television because the electricity in his house has long been cut off due to unpaid bills.

When he learned that it was his wife that the people were talking about regarding the recruitment of Veloso, he decided to watch the news on television in his neighbor’s house.

“When I saw her (Kristina) on TV, I am sure she was in trouble,” Sergio said.

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