It is one of the great ironies. One family is capable of producing a member who becomes world renown for beauty. At the same time, it secretly houses another who excels at barbaric ugliness. It seems that is the legacy of the Lalaguna family of Spain.
December 19th is a day that pharmacy student Mireia Lalaguna will never forget. It was the night she was crowned Miss World 2015 and declared the most beautiful woman in the world.
Less than two weeks later, it would be a day that her fan Paul Skye Kahawaty would not forget either— albeit for very different reasons. He would run into the vile ugliness of her brother, Oriol.
For many of us, the standard of beauty is greater than just a pretty face. We idealists hope for excellence in humanity, integrity and grace to be of equal importance to any aesthetics. So far, those elements on Lalaguna’s reign have been a bit rocky. Already she has admitted that she “cheated a little” by presenting herself in a video playing the piano. The score of the video is a piano score that Ms. Lalaguna did not play and does not know how to play according to the Bangalore Mirror.
If cheating is at all unattractive, it pales in comparison to the homophobia in at least one of her family members however.
Paul Skye Kahawaty had not come from a beautiful life. By age 20, he had lost both his parents. He had experienced years of physical abuse from another relative. He sought healing through music, art, a love of animals and beauty pagents. “It is not external aspect of beauty pageants but the ethos of beauty pageants that I love.”
He was thrilled when Lalaguna won her crown. Miss Lebanon has been his first choice, but his Spanish blood could not help but be thrilled over that country’s historic win. No other Miss Spain had captured the Miss World crown before. “I can feel the sincerity of Miss Lalaguna and you can feel that she’s not being plastic. Her blue eyes are really eye catching.” As any fan would, he went online to find out all about his new celebrity. On Facebook he ran into Oriol’s profile and after a bit of research, determined that Oriol is Mireia’s brother.
He sent Oriol a note. “My intention was to congratulate and greet him, like I said convince myself that she’s from a virtous family,that she’ll live up to responsibility of being Miss World.”
Kahawaty wrote: “I can’t be mistaken you must be the brother of Miss World 2015 Mirea Lalaguna Royo. You must be proud of your sister, even though I never knew her at all, I can feel that she really wanted to (be) the voice of Beauty With a Purpose campaign of Miss World. Her response was so heart-warming and you can really feel her passion, actually my paternal grandfather is from there, so somehow I’m proud of her triumph, wherever my late dad is for sure he’s very happy that someone from Spain has already captured the Miss World Crown. Thanks so much, Regards to your entire family and god bless. Belated Merry Christmas.”
It seems upon receiving this bit of fan mail, Oriol Lalaguna Royo checked out Kahawaty’s Facebook page and determined his sexual orientation. This, alledgedly, was his reply:
“yes, and so what. And who cares. Are you stalking me, you’re just a fucking faggot. You bring nothing but diseases like AIDS. You gay people cause nothing but trouble, may your mother fucker die now.”
Kahawaty was devastated by the outright vitriol and hatred. His hurt was multiplied over the allusion to his mother who had died recently. He apologized:
“I’m sorry Mister Royo, I did not mean to irk you. But you, I was so offended by the “MF” word cause my mum past away almost 2 years ago and I still feel the void over her loss. Once again, I’m very, very sorry.”
Just as his sister had pushed forward in a showcase of beauty that few have hopes of attaining, Lalaguna Royo, allegedly, pushed with similar passion into the darkness of ugliness and homophobia.
His final response to the apology was to send Kahawaty a picture of a boy with half his face blown off, with this note: “So now she is in hell burning with other doomed souls. I hope you die before the new year comes, shame on you, you must die like this kid. MAY YOU ROT IN HELL BULLSHITBULLSHITBULLSHIT!!! “
See image of the exchange below (warning, the graphic is extreme — the graphic is so awful that it does not pass Facebook standards, and was removed from the Facebook page Stop-Homophobia where it first appeared.)
My note to Miss World:
Dear Miss World,
Congratulations on your win of such a prestigious title. My hope that this accomplishment iDear Miss World,s not the end of a road, but the beginning of one. We are in a world where there is horror and monstrosity daily. You have an opportunity to bring a ray of beauty and kindness in your new role, and I hope you can live up to that challenge.
It seems you may need to start at home.
The alleged abuse by your brother towards one of your fans is unfathomable. I sent a note to your agents and got no response. My hope is that you see this and build a bridge back to decency.
This is not just about an exchange between two young men. This is about homophobia, a plague of darkness that rips families apart, throws teens from their homes, while subjecting others to devastating bullying and leading still more to suicide.
We live in an age where we now know that physical harm, just like physical attractiveness, are not as lasting as destruction to the psyche or the depth of beauty in the soul to heal such devastation.
The ability to bring healing to others lives is the only passionate beauty, truly. I have experienced it in my own life, in many small ways. I have lived it fully however in being able to take two small infants in harms way from drug addiction and neglect, and raise them into two happy, well adjusted young teen boys.
My hope is that you can represent true beauty. My hope is that the sparkle in your eyes is not of a superficial babble, but indication that you wish to transmit love and dignity to all who admire you.
Please speak out against the vile hatred that has been expressed out of your own family tree.
You are Miss World the winner of beauty. Maybe a stronger accomplishment would be the miss who can bring healing and beauty to the world.
One of your fans has already been devastated by ugliness in the wake of your win. Please turn that around for the rest of your fans and be not only the beauty who won in a pretty world, but the one who brought beautiful healing to an ugly one.
That then would certainly be an accomplishment worthy of a crown.
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Below is the graphic image of the exchange described above, please do not look at it if you are disturbed by extreme images.
Note: We have received an email from Mr. Lalaguna Royo who claims the exchange to be a fraud. From everything that Mr. Kahawaty has shown indicates otherwise– but this is Mr. Lalaguna’s denial: “My name is Oriol, Miss World brother, and I have already reported 2 months ago to the local authorities the news you are spreading for a fake identity and finally the case had been closed, reporting all the guilty webs, but now I have seen this again and my obligation is to do it again. The capture of the fake conversation you are spreading was created using a photo editor and fake (facebook, twitter, etc) accounts, and you are helping that person to achieve his awful purpose. So please, erase that information you shared via social networks to start solving the problem. I have been brought up to be a respectful person. This kind of news destroy my reputation.”
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Mr. Lalaguna Royo continues to deny that he wrote the comments that were captured. He claims they were done by bogus social media accounts and completely fabricated. His claims do not appear to be valid:
> The accounts were not some shell/fake accounts. They were Paul’s and the Facebook one in particular has been on line for years, authenticated and has never been suspended.
> If Oriol was correct that some stranger had constructed this fake dialogue, the verbiage that was attributed to him would likely reflect what the creator imagined he would sound like, or how he would communicate. Based on Oriol’s own emails to me, it is the same English-as-a second-language phrasing and indications of the same temperament. No one could have “guessed” to write as him unless they knew him well to imitate him. From my communications with Paul, he did not strike me as the kind of person who would think to fake something to that level of detail. As Oriol emailed me, I don’t think he realized his own wording was giving me the greatest insight that the alleged conversation was in fact, authentic.
I’m speechless, and probably shouldn’t have read this while waiting for the next presenter in an all-day training that I’m moderating. Your letter, loved it! The situation behind it is horrible whether Oriol really wrote the letter or not, someone did. I look forward to seeing what develops from this.
FYI, Above is the denial by Mr. Lalaguna Royo. His comments do not make sense with the interview we conducted around this, and the details Paul provided; so we have asked for his “proves”. We will keep you posted.
This is a mite disturbing. Somebody is outright lying..
As always, Rob, a great letter, well thought out. I wish I was as good as you.
That being said…
This young man responded to a compliment with rage and fear, and not merely a little bit, but grossly out of proportion even to an imaginary offense carefully mined from a friendly comment. His victim responded with grace.
I don’t remember the line exactly, but there is a scene in The Naked Civil Servant where a gang of homo-hating thugs threatens to attack Quentin and his friends. He confronts the leader with this: “You boys better go home before someone figures out which one of you is queer.”
I am increasingly convinced that the worst of our opposition is comprised of homo-hating homos of the worst sort, always trying to exercise their demons under the guise of exorcising mine. The fundamental flaw in their approach is that I don’t have any demons; I don’t even believe in demons.
But someone does.
Bravo, Ben. Great point.
I hear you. I will take “like” to mean that you stand against this kind of homophobic abuse in the world!
Wow. I cannot press “like,” because even though I agree with your response, I am mortified by the hatred expressed by this young man. I certainly hope the young woman crowned “Miss World” will do right by her fan and denounce publicly her brother’s words.