BROTHEL RAIDED IN PANGASINAN, 9 “ENTERTAINERS” RESCUED

October 15, 2022 Provincial

URDANETA CITY, Pangasinan – A brothel masquerading as a resto bar in Urdaneta City was overran by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation-Region 1 on Wednesday evening rescuing 9 “entertainers” being offered for paid sex for P3,000. Together with social workers from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in the Ilocos Region, NBI agents acting on an anonymous letter-complaint by
a group called “Concerned Women of Pangasinan”, swooped down on “Gravity restobar” at barangay
Nangcayasan, Urdaneta City, and found out Guest Relations Officers (GRO) being offered to customers for paid sex at the bar’s Very Important Person (VIP) rooms.

NBI-Ilocos regional director lawyer Hector Eduard Geologo said its owner Edwin Ceniza and his staff Asterio Paris Jr. and Arnold Martinez who acted as “pimps” are being charged with human trafficking
violations. Earlier in June, a letter was received from the “Concerned Women of Pangasinan” about the brothel “victimizing” husbands and even the young into the commercial sex operation of “Gravity resto bar”, prompting surveillance operations hatched to confirm and reconfirm the illegal operation, Atty. Geologo said.

During Wednesday night’s raid, NBI agents and confidential informants in cognito went to the restobar cum brothel as customers, Geologo narrated. One agent after agreeing to the offer of the pimp and paying P3,000.00, was led to the VIP with a GRO, an NBI Special Investigator said. All the entertainers were taken to a government welfare facility while the brothel owner and his staff were taken to the Urdaneta Prosecutor’s Office for inquest proceedings. Only last month, 11 women entertainers including a young boy who acted as a cashier, were also rescued from a brothel in Agoo, La Union by the NBI and DSWD. The
brothel, whose owner is now facing human trafficking charges, hid as a videoke bar. This, as the NBI Region 1 in close coordination with the DSWD, warned of the seriousness of its crackdown on brothels all over Ilocos Region.

Artemio A. Dumlao/ABN