APRIL 12. At a campaign rally in Quezon City, presidential candidate and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte recounts the rape and killing of Australian missionary Jacqueline Hamill during a 1989 hostage-taking at a detention center in Davao.
“I was angry because she was raped, that’s one thing. But she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first. What a waste!” he adds, drawing laughter from the crowd.
April 17. The video of Duterte making a joke about Hamill’s rape goes viral.
He tells reporters it was not a joke when he said it. “Do not make me apologize for something which I did. It’s a matter of honor. I said it in the heat of anger.”
While he will not apologize to anyone in particular, Duterte says “sorry to the Filipino people.” He adds: “It’s my style, it’s my mouth. I said it in the heat of anger.”
April 18. Duterte maintains that his statement was not meant to insult the Australian woman. “I was derogating the act of rape. It’s a slang actually,” he says in an interview in Bacolod City.
“I do not want anybody controlling my mouth. I say what I say and I’ve said it and if it does not sit well with you, that’s your problem, not mine. Why should anybody begrudge me for telling the truth?” he says.
Duterte adds that his publicist had prepared a statement of apology but he does not agree with it as there was nothing to apologize for. “It was street slang belittling the act of rape. As a matter of fact, because of the rape, I killed 16 people.”
April 19. Duterte, in a statement issued by his camp, apologizes for his remarks.
In the five-paragraph statement, he says “there was no intention of disrespecting our women and those who have been victims of this horrible crime.”
But a CNN Philippines report quoted Duterte, in an interview with reporters later that day, as saying that he will never apologize.
“Don’t force the issue because I will never really apologize,” he says in Filipino. Inquirer Research
Sources: Inquirer Archives, cnnphilippines.com