While seeking to explain that notorious papal slur, Duterte revealed that he been ‘fondled’ as a 14-year-old schoolboy, during confession, by a now long-dead American Jesuit priest, Father Mark Falvey. When Falvey returned to his native California in the late 1950s, he is alleged to have continued abusing children at a church on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, although he was never charged. In 1975, the year before Falvey died, the Jesuit Order reportedly shelled out US$16 million to settle claims of abuse involving nine American children, over a 16-year period. It was probably the tip of the iceberg. Duterte later said that the abuse he allegedly suffered had ‘to a large extent’ shaped his character, his politics, and his view of the world.
‘That’s how we lost our innocence,’ he said, adding that other former classmates at Ateneo de Davao High School had been molested by Falvey, too. Duterte said he hadn’t reported being abused out of fear of what might happen.
‘How could we complain?’ he said. ‘We were scared.’
Other experiences in those critical teenage years would profoundly mould Duterte’s character. Contrary to the mythology he has assiduously fostered as the People’s President — a leader who understood the problems and spoke the language of the poor — Duterte was probably the most privileged teenager in Mindanao; a spoiled brat, in many ways. For all his railing against those he branded the ‘oligarchs’ of Luzon’s political elite, he belonged to Mindanao’s political aristocracy. The man who would become the world’s most vulgar, foul-mouthed head of state was none other than the son of the governor of the vast province of Davao.
Vicente Duterte, a lawyer and former city mayor from Cebu City in the Philippines’ Central Visayas region, moved to Davao City and was elected to the most prominent political position in Mindanao when his son, Rodrigo, was 14. Within six years, Vicente would ascend to an even higher calling, joining the cabinet of President Ferdinand Marcos himself. As the family of the governor of Davao, the Duterte offspring — there were four of them — had it pretty good, with a household full of staff, including a cook, a driver, and a ‘boy’. And there was ‘security’: bodyguards, with Rodrigo assigned one personally. As time went by and his busy parents increasingly absented themselves from family life, it was the bodyguard fraternity with which their eldest son increasingly spent his time.
The bodyguards were drawn from the ranks of the Philippine Constabulary, in those days a notorious unit, under the command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and answerable to the Minister of Defense. From them, he learned the language and ways of the street, and ran wild, skipping school, sometimes for weeks on end, his absent parents apparently oblivious. What he studied instead was the coarse fighting talk, values, and mannerisms of the paramilitary cops he spent his time with. He adopted the persona of a bugoy, the term for ‘hoodlum’ in his local Bisaya language. He developed what was to become a life-long obsession with guns. He drank and smoked and slept around; often he didn’t come home at all, and, if he did, he’d slip in at 4 am. He became increasingly nocturnal — and remains so to this day; he holds press conferences that begin at 1 am, and he appears groggy when he has to attend a morning function.
A large painting of the president now hangs at one end of the former dining room in the family home, down a quiet suburban street in Davao City. Duterte is posed sitting in a wood-panelled room, presumably in Malacañang Palace, and has struck a self-consciously casual position, his right hand held up to his face — a Duterte mannerism. He says he has to massage a nerve to relieve persistent neck and spinal pain from an injury he apparently sustained in a motorcycle accident — for which he also uses Fentanyl patches, a powerful synthetic opioid. He’s wearing a traditional Barong Tagalog shirt with the left cuff unbuttoned, blue jeans, and Chelsea boots. His legs are crossed. The Philippine flag stands over his right shoulder, the presidential seal above his left.
The portrait lacks artistry and has the appearance of having been copied from a photograph, but it dominates the room where, long ago, his conservative governor-father ruled — and his authoritarian mother interpreted the law and meted out punishment. Duterte’s sister, Eleanor, sat directly under the picture, nostalgically recalling the beatings. We had been talking about the crucifix punishment.