Ousted INC minister faces serious illegal detention raps

Expelled Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) minister Lowell Menorca II and his wife, Jinky, are facing a complaint of serious illegal detention filed at the Justice department Wednesday by the parents of the Menorcas’ househelp, Abegail Yanson.

Candido and Rosalie Yanson claimed their daughter Abegail, 24, was being detained by the Menorcas.

The couple said they had been looking for their daughter for more than three months now since the Menorcas left Bulan, Sorsogon province.

“If they are not really detaining Abegail, why don’t they return her to her family? Her parents are here, her sibling is here, they’re all looking for her,” the couple’s counsel, Alex Avisado, told reporters.

The Yanson couple said they were unable to get their daughter during the Court of Appeals hearing on the Menorca’s plea for protection on Tuesday.

“We were all there during the hearing. I just wanted to hug her but they dragged her away,” Rosalie Yanson said.

“We tried to get near her, but we were sent out instead. It really hurt us,” Candido Yanson added.

But Yanson, who spoke of the failed abduction attempt on her on Tuesday, denied that the woman who accosted her was her mother.

“[The woman] put her arm around me and tried to pull me away,” the younger Yanson told the court.

The woman claiming to be Abegail’s mother said she last saw the younger Yanson on July 16 at the INC central complex in Quezon City, while Candido Yanson said he last saw her on July 29.  The Yansons said they last heard from their daughter through a text message on Oct. 25.

In a press conference last month, Menorca said he was abducted from Bulan, Sorsogon, in July, and brought to Dasmariñas City, Cavite province, where his captors reportedly tried to kill him with a grenade.  When it did not go off, they instead charged him with illegal possession of the grenade.

Menorca blamed members of the INC advisory council for his ordeal and said they had suspected him of being the blogger Antonio Ebangelista who had been exposing alleged corruption in the religious sect in his blog posts.

Menorca’s wife, Jinky, said a council member called her and ordered her to report to the INC central complex, warning that she would never see her husband again if she disobeyed. She brought along her daughter and Abegail, whom the family had just employed.

Relatives of the Menorca couple filed a habeas corpus and amparo petitions in the Supreme Court, claiming that the former minister’s family and their househelp were being held against their will at the INC compound.

Menorca’s family and Abegail were eventually rescued by the National Bureau of Investigation at a village in Quezon City.

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