(Eagle News) – President Rodrigo Duterte recalled the sexual harassment he suffered from an American Jesuit Catholic priest while he was still studying at the Ateneo de Davao in the 1950s.
Duterte recalled that the priest Mark Falvey was teaching for four years during his high school in Ateneo and that almost all of them had been sexually assaulted by the priest.
“Kaming lahat, nung nag-aral kami sa Ateneo, one — two years, ‘yung — pagka isama one, two, sige fourth, itong fourth year, four years. (All of us, when we were studying in Ateneo, one – two years. … if you combine, one, two, ok, fourth…fourth year, four years) Falvey, Mark Falvey was teaching there,” he said during his speech in Cebu City at the League of Municipalities conference, naming the Catholic priest who sexually assaulted him.
“Lahat kami noon nahipo. That’s why we were victims (All of us were touched. That’s why we were victims)” he said.
The President also recalled an incident of the Catholic Church’s refusal to conduct burial services if there is no payment and noted how every service, including baptisms and weddings, has fees.
“If there is God then you are not refused burial services on Sundays. Kaya nababaho mo ‘yung patay, sabihin mo, ‘Mayor, ganun.’ ‘Why?’ Because nobody wants to do services ang patay on Sunday. Monday, magsama ka, kukuha ka ng kasama mo na pari, kaibigan mo para mailibing ‘to kasi mabaho na. Dalhin mo doon sa simbahan, mumurahin ka pa,” he recalled in his speech.
He said that his parents even had to pay for his Catholic baptism in Leyte, and that he had to pay for the Catholic wedding service when he married his wife Elizabeth Zimmerman.
“Biro mo… Nung — noong ipinanganak ako sa Leyte, bayad ‘yun. Nandun pa ‘yung pangalan ko pati ‘yung resibo. Tapos ‘yung nagkasal ako kay Elizabeth, bayad rin ako,” he recalled.
Duterte had been known to always hit the Catholic Church and its priests for their sex abuse of minors, and their alleged “hypocrisy.”
In earlier remarks, he said that he had forgiven but not forgotten what the Jesuit priest Falvey did to him in his high school years at Ateneo.
“So I have forgiven him. Matagal na. But siyempre certainly I cannot forget because every time mag reunion kami, nagtatawanan kami. Yung iba patay na. Dahan-dahan nauubos na yung klase namin. Yung naiwan naglolokohan pa kami kung saan ikaw...” he said in a 2015 interview.
He revealed that the American Jesuit priest started molesting him and other classmates when they were high school freshmen at the Ateneo de Davao in 1956.
Society of Jesus spokesperson, Catholic priest Nono Alfonso, Jr. had confirmed in 2015 that other allegations of child abuse against Falvey surfaced after his death.
“After his death there, may mga lumitaw po na kaso laban sa kanya. May child abuse cases, lalaki at babae. Again po, hindi po nagkaroon ng formal cases dahil patay na po siya at that time,” Alfonso was quoted as saying.
-Jesuits had agreed to pay $16-M to settle other Falvey sex abuse cases in LA-
Falvey became an assistant pastor at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, a Catholic archdiocese along Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood in California, from 1959 until his death in 1975.
The Jesuit priest was also accused of sexually molesting four girls and five boys between those years –1959 and 1975 — in the said church.
Falvey however was never charged with a crime. In May 2007, however, the Jesuit order agreed to pay $16 million to settle the claims of sex abuse done by the Catholic priest.
In a report by the Los Angeles Times that appeared on May 18, 2007, it quoted one of the lawyers of the victims as saying that one of Falvey’s child victims, “tried to commit suicide” because of the abuse she suffered under the priest.
The LA Times report said: “One of his victims, an 8-year-old girl, tried to commit suicide,” quoting the lawyer for the victims, Raymond P. Boucher.
“This guy brought a lifetime of misery to a group of young children. They’ll never get over it,” Boucher told the LA Times then as quoted in the article “Jesuits agree to sex case payout” written by LA Times staff writer John Spano.
(Read: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/18/local/me-settlement18)
“The agreement in principle was confirmed by the Rev. Alfred Naucke of the California Province of the Society of Jesus,” the newspaper said.