by GEMMA LUZ COROTAN

LAST March 17 agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) picked up Stephen Guerrero, a second year Philosophy student of the University of the Philippines who was commuting to school.

For Stephen, it turned out to be a trip to a world he never knew existed. The agents, led by Special Operations Group (SOG) Chief Atty. Orly Dizon, mauled him inside the SOG office and made him believe he was going to die.

Today, the only way Stephen can put this nightmare behind him is to believe it never happened.

In the end of March, his family agreed to withdraw the case of attempted murder they filed against the NBI.

"We don't know what we are up against," Stephen's mother Rosalia says. "We were told we aren't just fighting Atty. Dizon and his men. We are up against the whole institution. It's not worth it if it will tear this family apart."

But U.P. Chancellor Roger Posadas, who offered the university's legal department to the boy's family, urged them to continue the fight. "This is not just about Stephen anymore but any ordinary citizen whose rights are trampled by powerful institutions like the NBI. Unless we do something about Dizon and his ilk, there's nothing to stop the NBI from perpetrating this on other people."

Stephen's story is that of an innocent, upper middle-class teenager brutalized by the agents of the law. He is a random victim of everyday violence on Manila's streets.

On March 17, Stephen was on his way to school when he saw a man mauling a jeepney driver along Taft Avenue, just in front of the NBI building. When he intervened, he was beaten up by the man, an NBI agent.

He was hauled into the NBI's Special Operations office where 10 men punched and kicked him. He was handcuffed, blindfolded and locked in a small cell for more than 24 hours. He was made to believe he was going to die: one of his captors taunted that nobody would ever know what would happen to him.

While all of this was being done to him, Stephen says, he dazedly asked himself: "What’s happening, why is this happening to me?"

He was released when an anonymous caller tipped his parents off and they rushed to his rescue. The NBI was unable to produce any documents allowing it to detain Stephen and so had to release him.

The NBI agents, who filed charges of direct assault upon persons of authority against Stephen, now claim they beat up and tortured Guerrero in self-defense. Here are the particulars about the boy they had to defend themselves against:

He is 18 years old. He is five feet, seven inches and weighs 150 pounds, a lot of it baby fat. A graduate of Ateneo High School, he has never been involved in a fight. He dreams of becoming a doctor. He lives with his father Candon, his mother Rosalia, his two brothers Alan and Jojo and sister Gail in a four-bedroom, brick-red bungalow along a shady, tree-lined street in BF Homes Subdivision, Las Piñas.

The house was built in 1976, even before Stephen was born, in what was still known as Central Bank Village because the lot owners were mostly Central Bank employees and their relatives. Many of the Guerrero's relatives also live in the same village.

Stephen was raised in this family and in this house, believing it to be a protected place, a perfect place. Like so many other families seduced by the utopian ideal painted by life in suburbia, they came here believing some kind of perfection can be attained.

They formed village associations to keep away the blight of the inner city: pollution, crime and garbage. Daily security patrols make parents feel safe enough to let their kids out.

Occasionally, one would hear that the Akyat Bahay Gang struck again. The Guerrero house has been robbed once when the family was away.

But Stephen's home has never known terror. Now it lives in fear, tormented by one day of random brutality. For almost a week after the incident, Stephen never left home without his mother.

In an affidavit, the NBI agents describe Stephen as a raving lunatic who suddenly attacked them from nowhere and without provocation. Dizon claims Stephen was high on drugs and had to be restrained.

But none of this is in the NBI agents' sworn statements. All Stephen is accused of is "direct assault on persons in authority."

In fact, there are discrepancies between what the NBI says and what it puts in writing. While he was being mauled, Stephen remembers an NBI agent accusing him of being one of the Uniwide supermarket robbers; another made a show of going through Stephen’s wallet and said he found drugs. None of these accusations emerged in the agents' statements.

Dizon says the agents mauled Stephen because he was a "spoiled brat." He doesn’t say what a "spoiled brat" looks like, and what law specifies a spoiled brat should be beaten up, tortured and illegally detained.

For his part, Stephen says: "They told me 'Tinuturuan ka namin ng leksiyon kasi nakikialam ka. Chief ng NBI pa ang nakabangga mo."

Stephen says that he had just wanted to help. His mother describes how her son once stopped a man from mauling a Jollibee delivery boy who had hit his car. The man walked away shamefaced.

But Stephen was out of luck that March 17. At about 8:45 a.m. of that day, he left UP Manila after picking up his grades from a summer class he attended. He boarded a jeep, trying to arrive in time for his Humanities class in Diliman. In front of the NBI gate along Taft, the jeepney he was riding in collided with a Toyota Corolla.

In a hurry, Stephen decided to ride another jeep. Upon alighting however, he saw NBI agent Narciso Halili punching the jeepney driver. Stephen approached him and asked, "Bakit mo naman sinasapak yung tao?"

According to Stephen, he came to the man’s rescue because that was what they were taught to do at the Ateneo: "to be a man for others."

"The man shouted at me 'Bakit? Sino ka ba?' Then he slapped me and punched me. The other men, NBI men, joined in. Two people were restraining me, one holding my right hand, another pulling me from behind. One of the NBI agents drew a gun and pointed at my stomach and pulled the trigger several times. The gun was empty."

He was dragged into the Special Operations Group room. "I asked for a phone to contact my father. Instead, several men ganged up on me and started pushing me, some hitting the back of my head.

"One of the NBI agents pointed at me, shouting, 'Ikaw yung nagnakaw sa Uniwide, ano?' I turned towards the door and ran for cover, I pleaded with them to stop beating me but they continued to hit me from all angles until I was down on my knees. My face was already bleeding profusely. I tried to run for the door but they pulled me back inside and continued to beat me without letup. I shouted 'Tama na, Tama na,' but my pleas fell on deaf ears."

Halili claims he was having an altercation with the jeepney driver when Stephen suddenly grabbed, punched and berated him. He said he was forced to defend himself and when it looked like the 18-year-old Stephen could not be contained. Dizon himself joined in, aided by security officers Restituto Gapuz and Rodrigo Macaraeg.

The four maintain that Stephen continued assaulting them inside the SOG office and they had no choice but to hit back.

Stephen asks: "How could I engage all of them in a fistfight? There were more than ten burly men beating me up all at the same time. I was outnumbered. They'd already beaten me up while outside the NBI headquarters. Why would I want to get beaten up a second time?"

The beating was nothing compared to the mental torture. Stephen was brought to a room behind the SOG office where the NBI agents handcuffed and blindfolded him. There, they made him believe he was going to die and the boy, finding himself in an alien world operating on rules he did not know, believed it.

"They threatened to liquidate me. They said: 'Puwedeng-puwede ka naming walain' since nobody knew I was there anyway.'

They led him out of the room, still blindfolded, making him believe he was on his way to be executed. "I was sure of it. I didn’t think I would see my family again."

At a little past midnight, he says, he was brought to the Homicide section of the Western Police District station on United Nations Ave. for inquest. This was where he learned he was being charged with direct and indirect assault of a police officer.

He found out that the owner of the Toyota Corolla which collided with the jeepney he was riding in was owned by Dizon. He also found out that the jeepney driver he tried to help testified against him.

His parents found out through an anonymous call that Stephen was being detained at the NBI. They came in full force, his parents, his uncles, his brothers, his sisters-in-law, seeking safety in numbers, massing around one of their own and wondering what had befallen them. What they saw at the headquarters was a nervous wreck beside himself with grief.

He sobbed in their arms like they'd never seen him sob before. On the way home, he cried again when he saw the villages gates. When he got home, he embraced one of the posts of the house, crying, unable to believe he was suddenly home free.

Soon after, the Guerrero family filed attempted murder and arbitrary detention charges against Dizon and four others. But after pressure from the NBI, the Guerreros decided to drop these cases if the NBI would withdraw their charges against Stephen. "We fear for our safety. We just want our peace back," says Rosalia Guerrero.

Stephen agrees. He's seen a world he never thought existed and he wants to get away from it. "All I asked of them is not to bother us ever again."