The Magundayao case is taking on tragic overtones. Can the stubbornness of an ambitious mother destroy her own son's future? To the despair of his father and sisters, this is what is happening to Gerard, one of the children illegally taken by his mother. Every time the family gets a video call, they see the symptoms noted in the speech therapy reports from 2022, 2023, and 2024 worsen.
The paradox is that Gerard is a very intelligent child in abstract terms - yet he lacks a developed linguistic structure. This leads him to construct his own language, where the speech therapists who analyzed him point out that he simplifies words (contracts them so they are shorter but still distinguishable from others) and, ultimately, develops a kind of "own language" (the one he uses with his sister, who was also illegally abducted).
The problem is that his "native language" allows him to transmit but not receive, since he often doesn't understand what is being said to him . For example, to say something in the past tense, Gerard uses the present tense and adds the word "yesterday" (something like "I go to school yesterday"); however, if an adult asks him "What did you eat at school yesterday?" then Gerard doesn't understand the question; he gets lost in the verbal tense. Added to this is the fact that the Spanish spoken by the abducting mother, Regina Magundayao Valdez , is extremely precarious (she says "Tú pone los zapatos" instead of "Ponte los zapatos"), which is regressing the child to his underdeveloped state of 2022. He is losing all the progress that had been made up to June 2024, when Gerard was beginning to properly develop his native language and the mental structure that it entails.
Prepared escape
Initially, Regina enrolled the child in a Spanish-language school, which, fortunately, is about twenty minutes from their home. However, after a month (around November 2024), she withdrew him from this school, arguing that she couldn't afford it and that it took time to get the children to school. She explained that she needed to cut costs on the child's education and, soon after, began building a swimming pool at home and carrying out various other improvements, according to sources consulted by this newspaper.
However, after a visit to her home by members of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG ), everything indicates that Regina is becoming aware that she may be in serious legal trouble, so she has told her neighbors that she will move. The neighbors, who do not understand why she is keeping the children locked in the house and depriving them of their family in Spain, are accused by Regina of being " spies " and reported to the authorities. So far, no complaint has progressed; the police themselves told the abducting mother that her complaint was unfounded.
Neighbors don't know if she's planning a short trip with her friend Juvy Grace Maniquez and the two children or if she's planning the disappearance of the four. This information is important because Maniquez is listed as a collaborator in the repatriation file with the Spanish Central Authority, so she could be investigated if the case develops into a criminal case for international abduction .
According to the same sources, the entire neighborhood is waiting to see if the two women disappear with their children or if they are simply planning a vacation. However, the most observant neighbors point out a disturbing detail: this month, work on the pool and home improvements has been halted. It can only mean one thing, and it is not a good sign.