MANILA, Philippines?It was supposed to be a rousing welcome by senior students for the incoming scholars of the famed Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA) in Los Baños, Laguna.

When it ended, the young apprentices wanted nothing but to leave the country?s only lodging school for artistically gifted students.

A veteran writer-director on Saturday bared the alleged hazing rites performed by senior students on freshmen students of PHSA.

Bonifacio Ilagan accused PHSA executive director Fernando Josef of tolerating the ?cruel actions? committed by some students against his 12-year-old daughter and five other first-year high school students.

He has asked the Quezon City Regional Trial Court to order Josef to pay his family P1.1 million in moral and exemplary damages for his alleged failure to act decisively on the complaint filed by his daughter, Dessa Rizalina.

In a phone interview, Ilagan said he was deeply hurt by Josef?s inaction in the case of his daughter.

?He was my best friend. Because of what happened, we have not talked or seen each other for the past several months,? Ilagan told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

?I have agonized over this. Despite resistance from some of my loved ones, I know I have to do something because we were the aggrieved party,? he continued.

Sought for comment, Josef denied his close friend?s accusations, saying he did his job as executive director.

?I would have wanted to help and talk to his daughter, but her mother said she was not ready. I just followed the school?s policies,? Josef explained. ?I?m really very sorry if I hurt him. I was also hurt by this. I just chose the interests of the bigger community which I serve.?

Josef said he would answer Ilagan?s complaint and that he was ready to resign from his post to give way for a transparent investigation of the case.

?I?m not the kind to run away if I did something wrong,? he said.

In an 11-page complaint dated March 25, Ilagan narrated the harrowing experience of his daughter on June 5, 2009, barely a week after she started attending classes at the boarding arts school as a scholar for theater arts.

On the afternoon of June 5, he said, junior and senior PHSA students ordered Ilagan?s daughter and five of her classmates to proceed to the National Arts Center Theater with their handkerchiefs and extra clothes.

While inside the theater, he said, at least 16 senior students blindfolded the unsuspecting students with their handkerchiefs and started cursing them.

Citing his daughter?s revelations, Ilagan said the young students were physically harmed as ?wooden sticks were poked against their body? while they were being subjected to various kinds of humiliation.

?The initiation or hazing rites were attended by physical violence like hair pulling, violent shoving, and pressing of body parts. At one point, (Dessa?s) blindfold accidentally fell off when her hair was pulled by the upper-class students,? he said.

Ilagan, who co-wrote the critically-acclaimed ?The Flor Contemplacion Story,? said he only discovered his daughter?s ordeal after a male student from Bohol confided to him that he had decided to quit school after undergoing the initiation rites.

?It was only then that my daughter admitted that she, too, was subjected to such traumatic experience,? he said in a phone interview.

In his complaint, he said Josef should be held liable for the physical and mental beating that his daughter and five of her classmates suffered at the hands of third and fourth year students.

?(A)s the executive director, (Josef) clearly did not observe the diligence of a good father of a family to prevent such serious damage to plaintiff and several other hapless first year students,? he argued.

Ilagan added: ?The dreaded boarding school subculture?the conduct of initiation or hazing rites by upper class students against first year students?has been allowed and tolerated to exist by (Josef).?

Ilagan also assailed Josef for overturning the school board?s decision to suspend for 10 days all those involved in the initiation rites.

But Josef defended his actions, saying he did not want to add to the burden of the students whose families were affected by the onslaught of Storm Ondoy.

?It was a tough decision to make. I may be wrong, but that?s how I saw it,? he maintained.