No rape, just consensual sex, says diplomat

The Panamanian diplomat accused of raping a 19-year-old Filipino woman yesterday denied the charge against him and insisted that he and the alleged victim had engaged in consensual sex.

“It was never my nature to force people to do something for me that they don’t want. All I did was to treat [her] nicely and never to violate her,” Erick Bairnals Shcks said in a statement e-mailed to media.

“As opposed to her claims, I never forced or coerced her to come with me to my place or spend the night with me to have sex,” he added.

According to him, “She lied to me about her age, she lied to me about not having a boyfriend … she lied about being rendered unconscious due to some drugs I gave her and most importantly, she lied about me raping her.”

Shcks said: “I believe I owe it to myself and to somehow to the Filipinos to be heard. It is an understatement to say that this whole experience has created a lot of permanent damage on me. More than that, it has jeopardized the image of my country to the Filipino people.”

He attached to his statement “evidence and proof of my innocence”—several photo grabs of him and the alleged victim. These were from footage taken by closed circuit television cameras installed in his apartment building where the alleged rape took place.

The photos showed him and the 19-year-old woman walking into the lobby of the building and riding in the elevator on their way up to his unit. In one of the photos, he and the alleged victim could be seen kissing. The other photos showed the woman after the alleged rape, going down in the elevator on her way to the lobby where she waited for several minutes as she asked the concierge to call a cab for her.

“I don’t intend to change or manipulate your intelligent views but rather seek a balance between what has been shown on TV and printed on newspapers and my side of the story before going further to questioning the validity of my immunity  or the presence of our embassy in your country,” Shcks said.

“I hope that your Senate, which will soon start an inquiry on this (Editor’s note: The Senate hearing was held on Thursday), will go back to the very heart of it: Was there really a rape that happened?” he added.

According to him, it was the victim who asked him to dinner on April 23, an invitation he gladly accepted “because I viewed it as a chance to gain a new friend or maybe a girlfriend.”

He said that during dinner, they had a good time talking  about “our families, my life here in Manila, among other topics which confirmed my impression that she was really an interesting girl.”

Shcks added that that the victim also claimed she was 21 years old and that she had no boyfriend.

Afterward, he said they went to a bar on Makati Avenue because “she said she wanted to dance and have drinks.”

“In the bar, we had a couple of drinks and a really good time. At that time, she was already kissing me and hugging me in front of the staff. One of them even took a picture of us,” he added.

When he suggested later on that they go back to his apartment, he said “she gladly accepted my invitation.”