From Juneau Empire.com (Oct 7):
"Kidnapped": Juneau couple self-publishes account of their abduction in the Philippines
Ludy and Loy Maturan pose for a picture outside their Juneau home in September. They were kidnapped along with their 7-month-old granddaughter by Muslim extremists in the Philippines in 1989, after several extremist groups had tried to extort money from Loy, then president of Dansalan College, for years. Dansalan College is in the Islamic City of Marawi.
Twenty-six years
ago this October, Loy and Ludy Maturan, now of Juneau,
were leaving their home in the Philippines
with their 7-month-old granddaughter when armed men stopped their car. As Loy
radioed for help, one of the men pistol-whipped him, he lost consciousness, and
the trio’s almost week-long ordeal began.
Now, 26 years
later, the Maturans have written a book about it, which they’ve titled
“Kidnapped by Muslim Rebels.” They’re self-publishing, and say it should be out
within a few weeks.
“We could not
have decided to publish earlier for security reasons,” said Loy, now 85. Ludy
is 81. “Now, we believe that we are safer here, in America.”
Ludy, a teacher,
was wearing heels when the couple was kidnapped and ended up walking barefoot
for miles in the woods. She was trying to carry their granddaughter but having
a hard time walking barefoot over thorny ground, so one of the rebels took her.
“”I kept on
looking and trying to find out whether the baby is alive,” she said. “And then
the baby cried, and I was so happy. That means she’s alive. And it was good,
because if I keep the baby, both of us would have died in that mountain full of
thorns.”
Loy and Ludy Maturan are shown in their Juneau home in September. They were kidnapped along with their 7-month-old granddaughter by Muslim extremists in the Philippines in 1989, after several extremist groups had tried to extort money from Loy, then president of Dansalan College, for years. Dansalan College is in the Islamic City of Marawi.
The couple was
kidnapped because their kidnappers wanted money; they asked for 1 million pesos
(at the time, the equivalent of around $25,000) and two radio sets. They ended
up being released for two radios and 25,000 pesos for “reimbursement of
expenses.” After they were released, some of their kidnappers approached them
asking for the “unpaid ransom money,” which is part of the reason the couple
had to leave.
The book in which
they tell their story is in five sections, and is mostly written by Loy, from
his perspective. The first, “Our Macedonian Call,” describes Loy’s decision to
become the president of Dansalan College, a self-described “prestigious Basic
Educational Institute” founded by missionaries in what is now the Islamic City
of Marawi, the only Islamic city in the Philippines.
He writes that he
felt God was “calling me to Marawi to serve Him there among the Muslims to
provide a Christian education for their youth.” (Though the majority of the
school’s students are Muslim, the majority of its faculty is Christian, and it
also describes itself as “a Muslim-Christian partnership.”)
The second
chapter describes the lead-up to their abductions.
For years prior
to the kidnapping, the family was harassed by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), who sent increasingly
aggressive letters asking for “donations,” sometimes in order to guarantee the
safety of the couple’s children.
The prior
president’s term ended with his kidnapping in 1979, 10 years before the
Maturans’ ordeal. Part of the reason Loy was recruited for the job was because
the college’s board believed a Filipino president would be less likely to be
abducted.
The third
chapter, with one account written by Loy and another by Ludy, describes their
ordeal once kidnapped; the fourth describes negotiations the couple wasn’t
privy to at the time, and the fifth, aimed at those who might find themselves
kidnapped in the same region (it’s a relatively common occurrence) offers four
“lessons” aimed at resolving the situation as positively as possible.
“It was hard to
forget the horrible experience we have had,” Loy said. “Should it happen now,
we would have died… we were going over streams, wetland, logs in the forest.
And we were thankful that during the nights we were in captivity, the weather
was good, although in the Philippines,
October and November is a typhoon month. When we were captured — abducted — the
weather was good, and the sky was starry. That was kind of a divine provision
for us.”
There were other
moments of goodness along the way. Some of the people that cared for them and
cooked them food - local people - boiled water from the lake and mixed it with
condensed milk for the baby. Many of those people treated them very kindly,
they said.
Their Christian
faith is central to how both of them dealt with the kidnapping.
“It was
threatening, but I absorbed everything, and I felt the presence of God,” Ludy
said.
When they were
kidnapped, they were members of the city’s Rotary and Radio clubs. Most of the
other members — fellow teachers, lawyers, doctors and government officials —
were Muslim. Those friends were a huge part of the reason the three were
released when they were.
“I credit them
with negotiating with our abductors,” Loy said. “Negotiations with Christians
would take a longer time. That happened to my predecessor.”
The president
before Maturan was kidnapped for 21 days.
Maturan was also
chaplain for the Iligan
City chapter of Gideons
International, an evangelical Christian association, and believes that the
group’s prayers helped the three receive help from God.
After they were
released, they filed for political asylum in California in 1991. Now, they’re U.S. citizens.
They hope to
publish their book, which will sell for between $25 and $30, by the end of
October. Loy also plans to revise it within the next few years; the last third
of the book is letters, clippings from newspapers and telegrams, but they’re
still waiting for permission to include all of them.
Loy also plans to
write a sequel to “Kidnapped by Muslim Rebels” about the couple’s arrival in Juneau, largely through
close family friends who lived here.
Many in Juneau have heard about
their ordeal, but Ludy doesn’t like to talk about it — it makes her cry to
think of the family they now see more rarely.
“I would rather
go to the room, lay down and read,” she says. “Here, we are happy, but there
are only two of us. That is sad.”
One of their sons
lives in New York; a niece lives in Texas. The 7-month-old
granddaughter kidnapped along with them, Trixzy Kay Maturan, is now married,
has a 2-year-old child, and is expecting another.
The couple visits
the Philippines
as often as they can, but have to “play incognito as much as possible,” Loy
said.
The experience
has made Loy think about Muslim-American relations in the Philippines, and in the United States,
where he sees it becoming a larger issue.
“I believe that
the earlier we conduct a dialogue where we can accept the other for what we are
and what we are not — unless we accept that fact –— we will continue to have
problems,” he said.
http://juneauempire.com/art/2015-10-07/kidnapped-juneau-couple-self-publishes-account-their-abduction-philippines
