Blogger files perjury raps vs parents of macho dancing boy

The noise may have died down but the legal war involving the six-year-old boy who was made to dance like a macho dancer on national TV – allegedly against his will – in exchange for cash is not yet over. On Tuesday, blogger Froilan Grate turned the table on the boy’s parents and relatives, saying it was them – and not him – who spread the controversial video via the Internet. He filed perjury complaints against the parents with the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office. In his 20-page counter-charge of perjury, Grate said it was in fact the boy's father, Jose Suan, and uncle, Argie Estrada, who first posted the video on video-sharing site YouTube and social networking site Facebook. "The evidence on hand shows that it was Mr. Suan and his brother Argie who were the source of the spliced and edited video," said Grate’s counsel, Romel Bagares. Bagares said the boy's father and uncle had posted and even "liked" the video long before the incident even triggered public outrage. "Of course, this begs the question: if Mr. Suan now calls the video a libelous and defamatory material, why did he and his brother Argie actively share it on their Facebook profile pages and seek the approbation of others before that," Bagares said. Grate's counter statements were in connection to an earlier statement made by lawyer John Pineda, legal counsel for the Suan family, claiming that Grate and other people who criticized the incident based their comments on a "spliced, tampered, doctored, and maliciously edited" version of the video. Grate claimed he and his group – which earlier set up a Facebook page to denounce what they called was a case of child abuse – were able to preserve "electronic evidence" to prove that Suan and Estrada were to blame. Grate said the pieces of evidence included screen captures and offline caches showing that the two posted the video on YouTube and Facebook. Grate made copies of the digital evidence on a disc and submitted it to the prosecutor's office. The blogger also claimed that Suan and Estrada had already deleted their original postings of the video. Grate, however, warned, "...despite their having deleted the electronic files in question from their respective Facebook profile pages, they left electronic footprints all over the place that they could not erase." Bagares said the boy's mother, Diana, should be charged as well because she was an "active participant" in "repeatedly [making] perjured statements" in a separate and supplemental complaint of child abuse, still in connection with the same incident. The Suan family's child abuse complaint was for alleged violation of Section 10 (a) under Article VI of Republic Act 7610 or the "Child Abuse Law." Grate was being sued for accusing the boy's parents of committing child abuse for the same incident. Grate set up a Facebook page called “Para kay Jan Jan (Shame on you, Willie Revillame!)" that contained a video of the boy dancing, which supposedly placed his “talent" for dancing “out of context." Apart from Grate, also charged with child abuse were child psychologist Dr. Lourdes "Honey" Carandang and another blogger John Silva. The parents criticized Carandang for writing a letter to the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) complaining about the incident. The MTRCB later launched an investigation into the matter. The parents are suing Silva after claiming in one of his blog entries that the boy, Jan-Jan, was a "victim of pornography" when he was allowed to perform sexy gyrations during "Willing Willie" in exchange for P10,000. The controversy prompted the producers of “Willing Willie" to change its format and rename the show “Willtime Bigtime." -- KBK, GMA News