Sara Duterte: My dad didn’t know of rape

Davao City mayor, Rodrigo Duterte with daughter Sara. GERMELINA LACORTE/INQUIRER MINDANAO FILE PHOTO

ILOILO CITY—Former Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte said she understood why her father, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, doubted her revelation that she was a rape victim.

“He does not know the story. Nobody knows,” Sara told the Inquirer on Tuesday evening on the sidelines of a campaign rally in La Paz District here.

She said she did not talk about the incident even with her parents until she was asked to react to her father’s  controversial joke on the gang-rape and killing of Australian missionary Jacqueline Hamill in 1989.

“I was asked for my reaction to his remarks as a woman. That’s it. I said I was not offended and I would still vote for him,” she said.

Sara said she came out for her father because he was being criticized for his remarks. “I came out because many who have not experienced rape condemn (my father) as if they were victims.”

“Why would I say that in public when it was a very humiliating experience?” said Sara, countering her father’s disbelief.