PHILIPPINES
The Standard
December 05, 2015 by John Paolo Bencito
PRESIDENTIAL aspirant Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday night revealed the name of the Catholic priest who allegedly molested him and several other high school boys when they were teenagers in the 1950s while studying at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Davao University.
“That priest was [the late] Fr. Paul Falvey. He wanted to touch [our private parts.] It happened during our generation, two years ahead of us and two years following us,” Duterte told Davao-based reporters on Thursday night.
“It cost him some P25 million because other victims filed a case. It was a case of fondling—you know what—he did during confession, that’s how we lost our innocence early,” Duterte said.
It took the young Duterte seven years to finish high school after being expelled from the Ateneo de Davao University for misconduct. He eventually finished high school at the Holy Cross of Digos.
“It was a sort of sexual awakening for each of us,” Duterte said. “We realized quite early that life was like that. How would you complain? We were afraid.”
Duterte also said that a joke in which he cursed the Pope for the traffic jam during his visit in January was not aimed at the pontiff but at incompetent government officials who could not handle the situation.
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