Hotel ‘boso’ scandal rocks Agusan town

SAN FRANCISCO, Agusan del Sur— A nephew of a hotel owner here has been the talk of the town after he was caught in the act of taking video to a hotel guest while she was taking a bath in her room last week.

The incident spread like wildfire in Facebook after local radio hosts posted the initial details of the story after the victim who is the wife of a retired American navy came out in the open to the public and formally filed formal charges against 22-year-old James Emerson Yap.

Yap is now languishing in jail after Rosemarie Plaza Marx, 36, filed a case on the violations of Anti Photo and Video Voyeurism Act of 2009 after police found the iPhone mobile phone he used in taking videos, an iPad tablet and an external hard drive at the adjacent room of the victim where he was hiding.

Marx said she was taking a bath on Room 24 of Paseo de San Francisco Suites where she and husband Ron were checked in on January 13 when she suddenly saw a protruding hand from an open glass window holding a black mobile phone taking a video on a selfie mode.

“I saw my face and my naked body on that cell phone that leads me to shout and cried for help,” Marx said in his statement on the complaint sheet.

What irked the Marx couple to pursue the case was the dilly-dallying among hotel staff to act on their complaint and it took the police 30 minutes to respond and opened the door at Room 26 where Yap was hiding because they had a hard time to give them the master key.

A repentant Yap tried to asked the victim for forgiveness and plead not to pursue the case with the assurance that he already deleted the video file on his iPhone.

But investigators found and confiscated the two other gadgets inside the room fueling speculations that he might have transferred the video.

By CHRIS V. PANGANIBAN – Phil. Daily Inquirer