A week after being charged with adultery, expelled Iglesia ni Cristo Minister Lowell Menorca remains tight-lipped and has yet to deny the charges leveled against him by INC member Davis Flores, who alleges that Menorca had an illicit affair with his wife Aedtnavye Juntilla Lazo from 2008 to 2015.
Menorca, who is set to testify at the Court of Appeals today, has refused to issue a statement regarding the charges. Asked to respond to the allegations, Menorca has said that he would “have to talk to my lawyers first.”
Menorca’s lawyer has yet to publicly comment on the complaint filed by Flores.
In his five-page complaint filed at the Manila City Prosecutor’s Office, Flores accused Menorca of having an affair with his estranged wife, Lazo, who Flores introduced to Menorca in 2008.
Flores said he became suspicious of his wife when the latter would show him flirtatious text messages from Menorca that read “Do you have a twin sister locked in a tower somewhere?” and “Davis is lucky to have a princess like you, too bad for me I don’t.”
Later, Flores recounted how he noticed that Lazo owned a high-end cellphone “which we could not afford” as well as other gifts. Flores also observed “lots of bath soaps, shampoos, and other toiletries from Manila Diamond Hotel, Bayview Park Hotel, and Sogo Hotel” in their bathroom.
Flores was later able to confirm his long-standing suspicions in late 2015, after stumbling upon the blog “D_OWNER_OF_AJS_HEART” (downerofajsheart.blogspot.com).
“Checking the website, I learned that respondent Menorca maintained a blog where he proudly documented his adulterous affair with respondent Lazo,” according to Flores’ complaint. “AJ” refers to Lazo, while the author handle “Eric” is one of Menorca’s nicknames.
In September 2015, Flores confronted his wife about the illicit relationship, after which Lazo “succumbed to the avalanche of the body of evidence which, when pieced together, conclusively proves a forbidden affair.”