More information are beginning to come up in the ongoing case Gretchen Fullido filed against her colleagues. According to Inquirer.net, her lawyer, Marvin Aceron, shared to a group of reporters the formal complaint they filed, which “contained text messages supposedly sent to Fullido by former ABS-CBN news executive Cheryl Favila and news segment producer Maricar Asprec from 2015 to 2017.” The text messages, which were allegedly received by Gretchen as cited in the complaint, included the following: “I pitched for you to be the social media anchor for Election Marathon. But mas gusto ko pa rin ng strip-teaser Gretch yata,” “Nothing really. I just want to say you were very sexy when you went up to me in the newsroom,” “Parati naman akong game sa’yo. Ikaw lang ang maayaw. Hindi ko pa nakakalimutan ang rejection mo. #hugot ko,” and “No. It’s more of a guy thing. Pwede pag lalapit ka, wag masyadong malapit? Unless tayong dalawa lang…”
The complaint further alleged that Gretchen felt that she “needed to be close to them beyond the Boss-Colleague level” when Tara Grets first launched in April 2015. Part of the complaint also claimed that Favila and Asprec were in an “open relationship” and “Favila usually reserved her Thursday for a third-party.” Moreover, Asprec allegedly asked Gretchen to become Favila’s “Thursday Girl,” which she in turn rejected. In addition, the complaint stated that “whenever she would reject Favila’s demands and sexual advances—professionally and personally—her “stories and work would suffer for it.”
Meanwhile, Favila and Asprec’s lawyer, Evalyn Ursua, said through Facebook that ABS-CBN had dismissed the same complaint as baseless. “This dismissal came about after Favila and Asprec proved that the text messages that Fullido used as evidence were distorted and maliciously taken out of their conversation threads,” she wrote. While ABS-CBN did indeed dismiss the sexual harassment case against Favila on July 16, it led to her termination for gross misconduct. On the other hand, charges against Asprec were dismissed as having “no evidence showing her guilt for the alleged acts.”
Featured photo courtesy of Inquirer.net
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