No love lost for Margallo

T hey’re calling her different names. A “monster” in one newspaper, a “savage girl” in another. But there’s no word to describe 23-year-old Liezyl Margallo and the acts that she is accused of.

That must explain why she tried to her face in front of the cameras when she was presented to the media last Wednesday following her arrest. She was ashamed to show herself to the world. And she had good reasons.

There’s a screen-grab of a scene from “Daisy’s Destruction,” a three-part video that has spread in the dark web, that shows a naked woman, believed to be Margallo, wearing a black mask torturing and sexually abusing Daisy. At the time of filming, Daisy was 18 months old. The toddler was tied upside down by her feet, while the masked woman held a lighted wax over her exposed genitalia. Enough said. What makes it worse is that some people actually paid big money to watch this smut. Sickos from the US, Germany, Brazil and other countries lapped up videos Margallo and her former Australian live-in partner Peter Scully had produced using minors in Mindanao. Some videos even sold for US $10,000.

It’s a good thing Scully, who has been dubbed “porno king” and “predator,” has been behind bars since his arrest in Malaybalay, Bukidnon in February 2015.

But he, Margallo and his yet to be identified other girlfriend have wrought enough damage to ruin the lives of 11 children, all girls, one of whom died because of “too much sexual abuse… through strangulation and internal hemorrhage.”

Daisy and seven other minors were lucky to be rescued two years ago, but the abuse Daisy had gone through means she will never bear children.

As for Margallo, she was taken to Cagayan de Oro where she’d be charged with qualified trafficking in persons and child abuse, among others.

I heard somewhere that if the death penalty is ever reinstated, Scully is first in line to hang with Margallo not a far second.

I know the public has already made up its mind about Margallo. Trust me. I did, too, the second I saw the screen-grab.

Because who could believe that such an innocent-looking woman would be capable of such horror and sadism. And she well could not deny the accusations against her because there are videos out there to support these.

It hasn’t been made clear how long she had been in cahoots with Scully. But when she was 19, she pointed investigators to the apartment in Surigao City where Scully buried the 11-year-old girl that he killed back in 2012.

But it doesn’t help her cause that she was privy to the fact that the girl died after Scully inserted kitchen knives inside her vagina, and she, Margallo, did not report it to police. Or that she, along with Scully, lured street children in Cagayan de Oro with promises of education and food only to subject them to torture and sexual abuse in front of the camera.

After her arrest, she confessed that the reason she had no qualms maltreating children was because she had been maltreated herself when she was a kid.

I know. Victim or not, it’s hard to feel sorry for Margallo.