Enrile relates he was once bullied: ‘I hate bullying’ | Inquirer News

Enrile relates he was once bullied: ‘I hate bullying’

/ 11:20 PM December 21, 2018

Enrile relates he, too, a bully victim and cries: ‘I hate bullying’

Former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile (Photo by RICHARD A. REYES / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Update

“I hate bullying,” former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said in a Facebook post he shared late Friday night as he revealed that he, too, had once been bullied.

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“I was also a victim of it when I was a second year student in a private high school where I was enrolled under a scholarship grant in Aparri, Cagayan,” Enrile, who is again running for senator in the 2019 elections, said.

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Enrile posted the message in the wake of bullying videos involving students at the Ateneo Junior High School that had gone viral on social media.

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READ: Ateneo probes bullying incident in junior high school

Though he made no reference to the Ateneo bullying case, he had this message: “Parents should go out of their way to inculcate to their children the virtue of kindness to others, especially those who are deprived and powerless. To the young people: learn to exercise charity to your neighbors, especially the weak and needy. Do not use your gift from God — your keen mind, your physical strength, your affluence, your power, or whatever to take advantage or dominate others.”

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“As the poet said, without surrender, be at peace with all persons,” he added. “Merry Christmas and may you all have a Happy New Year. Gusto ko happy ka!”

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Here is how Enrile related his bullying experience:

“One morning, when I was on my way to my class room on the second floor of our school building, four older male students rushed out of a door behind me and attacked me with their knives. I was completely taken by surprise and surrounded. I dropped my books and parried their assaults with my bare hands.

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“To save my life, I managed to jump out of a window. Upon landing on the ground below, blood was oozing from the right side of my neck, my left arm had a long and ugly cut, my belly was ripped, and my shirt and pants were red with blood. I rushed to the municipal building nearby and Dr. Alfredo Gorospe — the municipal doctor — sutured my wounds without anesthesia.

“I filed a case against my attackers but the case was later dismissed. I had no lawyer. My attackers had all the lawyers in town. Worse, I was expelled from school. Two of my attackers were kids of some members of the Board of Trustees of the school.

“And this incident defined the course of my life.

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“I wanted to be an engineer because math was easy for me, but I shifted to law because of the injustice I had suffered.”

/atm/ac

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