Nobel laureate, political activist, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once wrote, “I live, therefore I am guilty. I am here because a friend, an acquaintance, an unknown person died in my place.”
Wiesel was describing what is recognized in psychology as survivor’s guilt. This refers to the heavy burden of remorse, self-blame, and moral anguish that an individual feels after surviving a tragic event in which others died while they lived. Survivors may feel that their own survival somehow requires explanation, justification, or even punishment.
Ateneo basketball players Kieffer Alas and Sam Reyes recently spoke with Pia Hontiveros on The Pod Network about their near-death experiences during the Aurora tragedy that claimed the lives of their teammates, Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili. Reyes shared that he felt intense guilt, believing he could have done more to save Baterbonia. “It was eating me alive,” he said, describing how he could not sleep and how his teammate’s face kept appearing in his mind. He also spoke about questioning why God allowed him to survive when others did not.
Those who suffer from survivor’s guilt often fixate on several painful thoughts. The first is the “Why me?” question: Why did I survive while others were harmed or killed? The second is the “should have” fallacy: the tendency to keep revisiting what happened and believe they could have done more to change the outcome, even if the situation was out of their control. The third is guilt over returning to life itself: the belief that one no longer deserves to be happy, to succeed, or to continue living normally because others no longer can.
What makes the situation even more painful is that Alas and Reyes are not only carrying the trauma of what happened but also the public’s anger over what people believe happened. Both players shared that they have been receiving death threats and hostile comments on social media. Some have accused them of jealousy and even of being perpetrators, inventing wild stories about how they somehow caused the deaths of their teammates.
Alas described it as “going through two deaths.” The first was losing their friends. The second was being publicly blamed for their deaths. Reyes put it even more painfully: “Nabuhay nga po kami, pero parang pinapatay po kami.”
Rather than respond to the interview with empathy and compassion, however, many people doubled down on their anger. Some dismissed their words as scripted. Others chose to dissect Alas’ posture, gestures, and the position of his hands, claiming he had a “defensive stance” and therefore must be hiding the truth. It is both alarming and heartbreaking that so many people are willing to share and amplify these posts simply because their unverified claims reinforce the narratives they already want to believe.
These two young men, along with every other player who survived, are victims too. They witnessed the deaths of their teammates. They nearly lost their own lives. And now, because of social media, they are experiencing secondary victimization. The public is inflicting additional harm by telling them that their words are suspicious, their grief is fake, and their survival is undeserved and must be explained. They have already expressed that they feel guilty about coming home alive. And yet some people choose to viciously validate that guilt by making them feel as if they did not deserve to survive.
The failure of Ateneo’s management to provide clear, timely, and compassionate information created an informational vacuum that allowed speculation to flourish. The institution should be held to account not only for the circumstances that led to the tragedy, but also for how its response may have compounded the pain and confusion of grieving families and other survivors. However, it is equally important to call out people who insist on holding on to speculative narratives even as credible accounts and official processes begin to clarify the facts.
The country’s collective grief and anger are warranted, but they do not justify any form of cruelty toward those who are also victims of the tragedy. The public should continue to ask serious questions about supervision, safety protocols, risk assessment, decision-making, emergency response, and the broader responsibilities of those entrusted with student welfare. What we should not be doing is inventing motives or assigning blame to the young people who also barely survived.
Our pursuit of justice must be anchored in facts, not in the narratives we are emotionally attached to. If we say we are seeking accountability because we care about the lives and futures that were lost, then we must also confront the harm being done to the lives and futures of those who remain. Survivor’s guilt is already a heavy enough burden. No grieving child should have to carry the public’s rage on top of it.
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eleanor@shetalksasia.com
