In what world is Julian Ongpin a victim? Under what circumstances would a man born to privilege, to massive wealth, enough to fashion himself as “art patron” and “angel investor” at such a young age, in what world would he be a victim?

Found with the lifeless body of Bree Jonson in a hostel room they shared, a death surrounded by more questions than answers, any other person would be kept in detention—and rightfully so.

Found with 12.6 grams of cocaine in that room they shared, and testing positive for drugs, any other person would either be dead with a placard on his body labelling him as “nanlaban,” or be arrested for illegal possession and kept in a jail cell teeming with drug suspects.

Found on CCTV moving about the crime scene strangely—from disappearing to go to the fourth floor of the hostel, to getting a ladder to remove jalousies from the bathroom window of the hostel room, and then not going through that window, to finally disappearing into the room and only some time after calling on the hostel staff for help—any other person would have been treated, and tagged, and seen as a suspect.

Julian has elided all of this. He is not in detention—not for drug possession or for being a suspect in a questionable death. He is not being tracked by the authorities—at some point the police admitted they didn’t even know where he was (maybe in their house in Manila or Baguio, they said). According to the police report, he “continuously drank liquor” in the presence of the police—a disrespectful, arrogant move only the wealthiest among us would do.

And now charged with drug possession by no less than the Department of Justice—not the police, not the National Bureau of Investigation, but the DOJ—Julian has opinion columnists like Emil Jurado and Tony Lopez, writing about his alleged innocence. Two (old) men who obviously have no sense of gendered writing, and are revealing for all the world to see the kind of misogyny they believe in, are framing Julian’s innocence by trampling on Bree’s character.

As woman, as human. None of us should be having any of it.

Lopez—like all terrible men—likes to think he simplifies this all for us by saying that:

“Unfortunately, apparently high on drugs, the girl hanged herself inside their hotel room’s bathroom. Julian tried to revive her but to no avail.”

But as we all know about macho shit, what he covers up is more important than what he says. For example: the question of whether or not Bree even committed suicide has yet to be answered, but he talks about it here like it is fact. He evades the truth that this is the narrative of Julian, a narrative that is being contested, and being contested with the fact that “the initial medico-legal report of Ilocos Training and Regional Medical Center showed signs of struggle.”

Beware of simple-minded male chauvinists who like to think they only need to assert something as true, for it to be so. Never mind that what they think makes little sense to the rest of us.

For example, Lopez insists the drugs belonged to Bree, because this is what Julian says: “Ongpin has denied owning or using the drugs.” Lopez conveniently leaves out the part where Julian tested positive for drugs that very same morning when Bree was found dead, and that he was booked and got his mug shot taken on charges of illegal possession right then.

But Lopez cannot be bothered with facts. After all, he believes that “it is the woman who carried a certification she was allowed to use drugs because of her medical condition.”

What the hell is this man talking about. The “certification” is a prescription, and it is one for anti-anxiety medicines. Certainly, Lopez should’ve known better than to conflate 12.6 grams of cocaine found in the room, with actual medicines that we now know a majority of us use?

Or is it that male chauvinists never need anti-anxiety medicines or anti-depressants—because everything is served them on a silver platter—so what kind of anxiety must they have?

Jurado throws his hat into this ring of misogyny by insinuating that Bree must own the illegal drugs because:

According to reports, the girl companion of Julian was well-known in artists’ circles as a drug pusher. Is this even true? After all, the cocaine was found in a pouch inside her handbag. Santa Banana, why was the DOJ so quick to point a finger at Ongpin?

SUSMARYOSEP. When Jurado says “reports” does he mean the TROLL COMMENTS on Facebook, that talk about Bree in this light? Or does he have “other reports” from the “artist circles”? Pray tell, where are these reports?

And if this is how this narrative will be spun against Bree, if this is now the acceptable way to presume the guilt or innocence of someone, then maybe it’s time we put together “reports” on Julian Ongpin. What kind of “business” did he have with the art scene? How did he conduct his business, how much did he earn from the labors of artists, and who else has this kind of art patronage “victimized”? How many young female artists have “fallen prey” to this kind of patronage and angel investments, what kinds of wheeling and dealing does it involve?

If these men are here to put into question the character of Bree, then we should have as much freedom to attack the character of the one who is alive, under whose patronage many others might fall victim?

Both Jurado and Lopez are of course doing this to question the DOJ’s decision to indict Julian for drug possession. And these two misogynists—in very classic natatarantang mga macho mode—do not even have their stories straight. Lopez says the drugs were in two pouches on the second bed in the room; Jurado says it was inside Bree’s bag.

Let’s add to their confusion, shall we?

On September 19, in one of the first reports from the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

“What I can only say now is we found plenty of cocaine in the bed. We cannot tell what caused her death. We have to wait for the result of the autopsy,” Macaraeg told the Inquirer.

If the drugs were inside two pouches, or inside Bree’s bag, does that mean this description from Maj. Gerardo Macaraeg, San Juan town police chief, does not hold?

On September 24, in a Manila Bulletin report the timeline yields a different narrative altogether:

“Personnel of the Scene of the Crime Operatives (SOCO) were called to process the hotel room. The SOCO personnel arrived “before 7 a.m.” and found 12.6 grams of cocaine on the bed of Ongpin <emphasis mine>.“

This is specified in this particular report because it details how Julian had told the police that he had purportedly moved Bree from the bathroom to “her bed.” Ergo, the bed on which the cocaine was found, was allegedly Julian’s.

At this point, it is clear that the narrative is shifting towards, and is being controlled by, the more powerful and moneyed among us. It is clear that this narrative will be on the side of the accused, given his connections, given his father’s friends, given the way in which oligarchs own practically everything in this country—including people’s minds. Both Jurado and Lopez spend time not just defending Julian, but also waxing romantic about the goodness of the Ongpins, while deliberately discrediting and ruining Bree, that lifeless body on a bed in a hostel room in La Union, the dead woman in this narrative.

We know of this woman. Some of us might even know what it’s like to be Bree, embroiled in the youthful excitement of creativity, the headiness of achievement, the exhilaration of freedom.

And we know of men like Julian, we know of this kind of wealth and power, and the ways in which it can be used and wielded against us, the kind that knows people in high places, the kind that has people on its payroll, the kind that can skew the truth in his favor.

And we know of chauvinism and misogyny. We feel it in the spaces we enter, we hear it in words spoken, we know it when we see it. We know of how it silences and oppresses us, and makes us feel so small and negligible and irrelevant. 

This is what they are doing to Bree. They are making her death small, they are making her life irrelevant. In the process they hope that we will all become afraid of the powers that control this narrative. That we will be afraid enough to fall silent. 

But as many women before us have shown, for many instances that involve the moneyed and powerful, silence cannot be an option. ***