WE should not tolerate such scandalous acts in our ranks.”
Interior and Local Government officer-in-charge Eduardo Año made this comment when he relieved last Oct. 24 Chief Supt. Joseph Adnol as the director of the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA) over allegations of sexual assault carried out by cadets against fellow cadets.
Last Oct. 6, two freshmen plebes were allegedly forced to perform oral sex as a punishment meted out by upperclassmen.
Aside from the filing of administrative and criminal charges that will lead to the expulsion of the instigating cadets, the investigation ordered by PNP Chief Oscar Albayalde extends to the replacement of academy instructors of more than two years as part of the “restructuring” of academy officials.
Last March 21, nine undergraduates led the mauling of six graduates of the Maragtas Class of 2018 after the graduation ceremony. The cadets said the mauling was their retaliation of the abuse they suffered from the upperclassmen.
The PNPA has dismissed the nine cadets, who have filed an appeal.
The March and October incidents manifest the culture of violence that exist not just in the PNPA but many institutions of work and education, where rape, hazing, harassment, assault, and other acts of violence are carried out by persons of authority or moral ascendancy, exemplifying less hypersexuality than acts of power and subjugation.
Año has urged the end of “this so-called tradition or culture of violence” in an institution that ironically “produces the future police, fire, and jail officers” in the country.
The greater scandal is that sexual harassment, rape, and other forms of sexual violence target the young where they are schooled or trained. Often, the perpetrators are those entrusted with their mentoring.
As a young writer then meeting the icons of her time, Fely (not her real name) learned that creativity and sensitivity can co-exist with lust for domination and perversion when, following her intoxication during a drinking session, she was assaulted by a senior writer.
Rape was consummated with the cooperation of another fellow, a woman she confided the first assault to and trusted to protect her from the predator.
Manipulated into being alone with the male writer, she learned to dissociate herself from the act of rape by shutting down: “I did not move, I did not make a sound, I was not there.”
The abuse by two seniors trapped Fely into a cycle that continued long after the incident. The male writer coerced her to answer his calls to her home every Saturday at 9 a.m. He talked dirty, threatening that if she did not pick up the phone, he would tell her parents about “what happened.”
As he whispered to her ear on the night of the first assault, “This is your fault.”
Even after the male writer passed away, Fely could not put the rape behind her. She has never exposed her rapist and the other writer conspiring in the protracted abuse.
“I would not fight back. I just kept on quietly.” Yet, she marks the rape as the start of the break from her previous life as an idealistic 21-year-old.
Today, Fely teaches, writes, and reaches out to her students.
“At least three students per class every year” are assaulted or raped, she reveals. She decries that writers’ organizations collect membership fees but carry out no sanction against “predators.”
“This kind of beast does not die. Wants to survive to do it again, chooses their victims well,” she writes.
For Fely, speaking out against the culture of sexual violence is a step towards “keeping seasoned predators in check and (making) future predators hold their breath.”
“I hope that we can walk as rape survivors... To show other women we can survive and thrive beyond what has happened and encourage other women to tell before it is too late.”
Institutional safeguards must be put up to end the culture of sexual violence, but survivors bear the brunt of resistance and advocacy to prevent more victimization for now.