PASIG CITY (MANILA, PHILIPPINES)
The Rappler
September 18, 2020
By Vicente Rafael
‘Duterte’s obscenities feel subversive, but subversion in this context is in the service of an autocratic end, where laughter produces an intimacy between ruler and ruled’
Perhaps the most revealing instance of Duterte’s power of storytelling consists of his tale of being sexually abused at the age of 14 by an American Jesuit priest during confession. He often returns to this story as a way of casting aspersions at the Catholic Church that had been critical of his human rights abuses. Folded into this story, however, is another: his sexual abuse of their household help (which he later confesses was fabricated).
Here what we see is a double confession — Duterte to the priest and to the audience — and a double assault: the priest’s on Duterte and Duterte’s on the maid. The two acts of violation turn out to be intimately related whereby the priest’s assault of Duterte becomes a means for the latter’s domination of his audience. He has frequently told these stories on various occasions, usually in a mix of Taglish, Bisaya, and English. Below is my translation of a composite version:
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