CDN website screenshot
The story of of the arrest of 23-year-old “savage girl” Liezyl Margallo drew so much outrage, and equal amount of hate, in the internet that many have started calling on the government to revive the death penalty in the Philippines.
Margallo is an alleged human trafficker with 16 arrest warrants in Cagayan de Oro City for the torture and sexual abuse, captured in gruesome sex videos, of about a dozen female street children, including a 12-year-old one who was tortured to death. Her whereabouts was largely unknown for nearly two years until her arrest last Wednesday in a resort on Malapascua Island, located off the mainland town of Daanbantayan, 127 kilometers north of Cebu City.
The story of Margallo’s arrest has generated so much interest here and abroad that as of 8 p.m. on Thursday, Cebu Daily News’ headline story titled “Savage Girl’ Falls” has generated 504,000 shares on the CDN website.
Noeh Ortega Fernandez, in a comment posted on Cebu Daily News’ banner story posted on its website today, said: “This is a sick, demented, poor excuse of human being. Can somebody tag any Catholic bishop or clergy about this? Please include Senator Hontiveros and ask them if this individual still deserves to live? This is a perfect example why death penalty should be revived.”
Another netizen named Thess Lacatan supported the call to to bring back the death penalty in the Philippines. “If this is the kind of brutality and crime I will agree to bring back the death penalty,” Lacatan said in a Facebook comment.
For Xy-za La Fuerte, Margallo and her cohort, Australian national Peter Gerard Scully, deserve nothing less than capital punishment: “WHAT THEY DID TO THOSE LITTLE GIRLS IS PLAINLY UNACCEPTABLE!! Such sadistic, psychotic, inhuman act!! WE SHOULD BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY!”
Sheba Daro described Margallo as a “monster.” She said: “Electric chair is perfeect (sic) para sa monster na yan. Masahol pa sa hayop (Worse than an animal).”
Another netizen, Anthony Zosa, said he has always defended the right to life of a person but not in Margallo’s case.
He said: “The belief that no matter how devious a person may seem on the outside, theres (sic) still something intrinsically good on the inside.
Everybody deserves a second chance at life, to right wrongs and to give people every chance to be better than they were yesterday.”
“Well, today i think i MIGHT make an exception.. what this woman did is so evil that she does not only deserve to be condemned but to be jailed till the end of her natural life. Death would be an easy escape for her. Let this woman rot in prison and live
miserably.”