‘Disgusting’ Duterte scored for rape story

Rodrigo Duterte’s narration of his molestation of a house help in his high school days earned more disgust from a women’s group who said the President is a “maniac”.

“It is deeply disturbing even for Duterte to brag about attempting to rape a maid when he was a minor,” women’s group Gabriela said in a statement Sunday.

“This statement about his crime as a young man is only the latest in his countless statements bragging about flagrantly committing crimes against women and the people, from goading soldiers to rape women in Marawi to ordering the bombing and hamletting of lumad communities and publicly ordering extrajudicial killings in the name of the war on drugs,” Gabriela said.

In a speech in Kidapawan City Saturday, Duterte said he twice inserted his finger inside their maid’s panties before going back to his room to masturbate when he was a high school freshman at the Ateneo de Davao University.

Duterte said he told the priest about the incident in a Sacrament of Confession.

“The maniac in Malacañan has proven that he had no qualms violating the rights of women, people of lower stature and viewed them as his own personal toy,” Gabriela said in its reaction.

“This latest confession has brought shame not only on himself but on the entire nation that trusted him to lead judiciously and righteously. He has proven himself unworthy of his position and should resign,” the group added.

Malacañan, as usual, said reports have yet again taken Duterte’s narration out of context, saying the story was a “laughable made-up anecdote to dramatize the fact of sexual abuse that was inflicted on him and his fellow students when they were in high school.”

Duterte earlier identified American Jesuit Fr. Paul Falvey, S.J. as the school administrator who molested him and several other Ateneo de Davao University students.

But while Duterte has repeatedly upset Filipinos with his scandalous language and remarks in the past, his latest speech shocked even more.

Activist nun Sr. Mary John Mananzan, OSB said she initially wanted to ignore the President’s “latest atrocious action on an official event” but she was so disgusted with Duterte’s “graphic and provocatively detailed pornographic narration of his molesting a kasambahay (house help) in the context of the Sacrament of Confession, she felt she should issue a statement of indignation and disgust.

“I thought before he was just like (US President Donald) Trump. He is certainly worse,” Mananzan said.

Mananzan also scored among those in Duterte’s audience who can be heard on the video of the speech to have laughed at the President’s remark.

“What is even more disgusting is, as usual, his audience who looked like educated people laughed at his ‘joke’,” she fumed.

“How could people have descended so low in such a short time? Was there no one there with the decency and courage to get up and leave?—because I think that is what should be done on such an occasion,” Mananzan said. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)