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MANILA, Philippines — Mark (not his real name) was a Grade 9 student at Bacoor National High School (BNHS)’s Molino main campus in 2018 when a teacher made him and the other boys wear tight-fitting shorts for a dance act in class.
“He required us to wear cycling shorts and made us dance as part of the performance task [for] his subject,” Mark said in a phone interview on Monday, recalling how he and his classmates felt awkward about their outfit but didn’t voice an objection.
“At first, I was uncomfortable because I felt exposed. We just laughed it off because we were kids but as time passed by, we realized that what he did was wrong,” he said.
Mark recalled other incidents when the teacher behaved inappropriately, such as talking about having sexual intercourse with students in the classroom.
Subtle touches
Other times, the teacher made unwanted physical contact with the students, he said, describing “subtle touches not on the private parts but other parts of the body.”
Mark and his classmates were not alone.
This week, a social media post that called out teachers at BNHS for alleged sexual exploitation and other inappropriate behavior toward students went viral, garnering over 37,000 interactions by Tuesday and prompting many other students and alumni to share their own experiences at the Cavite school.
Other posts exposed screenshots of alleged attempts by some of the teachers to groom their underage students for sexual favors.
One showed a picture of male high school students, apparently taken covertly, on the first day of class last week. In response to a Facebook user who commented there were “plenty of yummy ones,” the accused teacher agreed: “You said it.”
‘Baby’
In another post, another male student recalled getting instructed by one teacher to call him “baby” instead of “sir.”
The teacher had also repeatedly invited him to his house, according to the student, who said he ignored the remarks because he was allegedly being sexually harassed by another teacher.
Michael Poa, spokesperson for the Department of Education (DepEd), said the allegations raised against the BNHS teachers were “very disturbing news,” adding that the agency was not taking them lightly.
An investigation into the matter has been launched, led by the schools division office (SDO) of Bacoor, he said.
“There were six teachers mentioned in the posts. Said teachers were not given any teaching load pending initial investigation on the matter,” Poa said in a statement.
Zero tolerance
“We will continue to coordinate with the SDO and the regional office concerned. We have zero tolerance for any form of abuse in our schools,” he added.
Teodoro Gloriani, principal of BNHS, said he and the faculty were shocked upon seeing the viral posts.
He said the teachers named in some of the posts were summoned and questioned about the veracity of the screenshots.
“They denied it and [said] that most of the conversations were crafted. They said the one who posted was skillful because he was able to fake a conversation between the teacher and the victim,” Gloriani told the Inquirer.
A check on Facebook showed that the accounts of four of the six accused teachers were deactivated as of Tuesday.
The one who made the original post was Miguel Damasco, an alumnus of the school. He said he had originally posted screenshots of the conversations of the teachers on Facebook. But the post was taken down the next day for supposedly violating the platform’s community rules, prompting him to take to Twitter instead.
30 victims
“My friends who are also alumni of the school and I were talking about exposing (one of the teachers) because he has long been acting like that but no one was brave enough to file a complaint,” Damasco said in a phone interview.
But since his post went viral, more than 30 victims have come forward, he said, adding that his group was already in talks with a lawyer from the Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan for a possible case.
Gloriani confirmed that the teachers named in the posts were placed on “floating status,” or without teaching load, since many parents had expressed worry about the safety of their children currently enrolled at the school.
He added that the teachers had agreed to cooperate with the investigation.
The scandal at the Bacoor high school follows controversies that hounded other Philippine schools whose teachers faced similar accusations of sexual harassment or abuse.
In July, a senator called for a Senate inquiry into reports about the alleged “culture of abuse, harassment and violence” at the state-run Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA) in Los Baños, Laguna.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros, chair of the Senate committee on women and children, sought an investigation, in aid of legislation, into the alleged “gender-based sexual harassment, emotional abuse and other forms of violence” experienced by alumni and students of the school.
Vice World News had reported on the accounts of PHSA students who allegedly experienced abuse from their teachers.
But Hontiveros said the complaints fell on deaf ears. “Even worse, survivors of abuse claimed to have been victim-blamed, silenced, and neglected by the PHSA administrators,” according to her resolution.
Under the Safe Spaces Act, schools are required to provide a gender-sensitive environment and a confidential mechanism for the reporting and redress of grievances on matters of sexual and gender-based harassment.
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