Adonis’s poverty in the last six years — at the time that he was being tried — worked so intricately against him. With his wife and two daughers, Adonis barely survived on a 7,500-peso monthly salary as a broadcaster. In 2004, he was assigned to the Bombo Radio station in Cagayan de Oro City.
At first, Adonis said he did not complain because he was receiving an additional 3,000-peso allowance during his first three months in Cagayan de Oro. He thought the additional pay would become permanent. But after three months, the allowance stopped. The Bombo management explained that the additional pay was just a “relocation allowance,” which only covered his first three months in Cagayan de Oro city.
So, when the relocation allowance stopped, Adonis was living on his old salary 500 kilometers away from his family. “I had to rent a room at 1,000 pesos a month,” he said. For food, he struck an arrangment with an eatery to allow him to eat there and pay for it at month’s end. “When payday comes,” Adonis said during a visit at the Maa City Jail this week, “there was barely enough left for my children, who were already in college.”
His assignment to Cagayan de Oro also made it very hard for him to attend the hearing of his case.
“To attend hearings, I had to finish my 6:30 p.m. radio program first before I leave Cagayan de Oro that same evening so I would arrive in Davao at eight in the morning the next day, in time for the nine o’clock hearing of the case,” Adonis said. “Afterwards, I had to rush back to Cagayan de Oro again in time for my radio program that same day at 6:30 in the evening,” he said. “Sometimes, I couldn’t even afford the bus fare to Davao,” he said, his resentment now boiling over. (The bus ride from Cagayan de Oro to Davao takes at least seven hours by bus.)
Driven by desperation and helplessness, Adonis, in 2005, finally went AWOL (on absence without leave ) from the radio station and disappeared. His disappearance prompted his lawyer, Leopoldo Cagatin, to withdraw from the case. It is impossible for him to protect Adonis’s rights and interest anymore, Cagatin said in a motion to withdraw in February 2006, when Adonis could no longer be found.
Unable to afford another lawyer (according to Bombo Radyo, they were the ones who hired Cagatin), Adonis stopped attending the hearings altogether. Last Feb. 19, police arrested Adonis while visiting his parents in Bankerohan. He could be transferred to the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa if Nograles successfully blocks Adonis’s attempt to apply for probation.
According to a Sun.Star Davao report, Adonis had wanted to apologize to Nograles but Bombo Radyo ordered him not to do it. “Had it been up to me, I would have apologized, but the management directed me not to do so,” Adonis told the paper.
But Bombo management denied this. “If the person concerned resolved to stand by his word, what are we to apologize for?” Bombo Radyo area manager Janilo Rubiato told Sun.Star Davao. Rubiato also said the station paid for the services of Adonis’s lawyer and provided the broadcaster financial assistance as well.
Nograles, in any case, was not going to take Adonis’s alleged infraction sitting down. “I have long forgiven Adonis but I and my family cannot forget what he did in destroying our reputation,” Nograles was quoted by the Philippine News Agency as saying in February.
Adonis is also facing a similar case filed by Jeanette Lomanta, a host at the time of an ABS-CBN Davao show who was identified as the woman allegedly caught in bed with Nograles.
