The Subic Rape Case

AT THE end of the telenovela “Marimar,” Angelika, the villain that starlet Katrina Halili played, got more than any one mortal’s fair share of punishment. She had lost one eye, got into a full-bore hair-pulling, punching and kicking duel with the lead character, was shot, escaped in a helicopter, only to be thrown out of the chopper and land in a pond filled with crocodiles, who proceeded to feast on her flesh.

But compared to the drubbing that Katrina is currently receiving, she might prefer the fate of her character. At least the woman lost only her life. Katrina, it seems, is doomed to live forever in the shadow of those dimly-lit scenes in grainy footage on pirated DVDs that are currently the best-selling items in Quiapo and the fastest circulating fare in Internet exchanges and swapped thumb drives.

I have yet to view the controversial videos, and have no desire to see them for myself. But so many people have told me they have seen the scandalous footage, not only of Katrina Halili but even of many other women, all united by the fact that their sexcapades with Doctor Hayden Kho have been digitally immortalized.

Most everyone who’ve seen the footage said they were “appalled” by what they saw, that they’re sorry for the women in the videos, and that Dr. Kho deserves to be hung by his own ---. Still, none of their moral scruples seemed grave enough to stop them from patronizing and perhaps even enjoying the digital peep show. There’s even a bit of social cachet attached to being one of the first to have seen the incriminating evidence.

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THE “GOOD” doctor himself has already apologized for his “mistake,” but the apology seems a trifle late, after he had repeatedly denied the existence of such sex videos, and after he had allowed – albeit through no fault of his – the steamy videos to circulate around the city, if not the country.

His lawyer, Lorna Kapunan, makes clear that what Kho had videotaped were “personal” encounters with several women, and that he kept the footage as a form of memorabilia, a digital diary, as it were, of his amorous adventures. In short, it was for his private enjoyment.

But it seems clear that most of the women didn’t know their intimate moments with the doctor were being videotaped. His former (or current?) girlfriend, celebrity doctor Vicky Belo, is said to have been convinced by Kho to consent to being videotaped after he assured her it was only for their personal consumption.

Still, the women’s privacy, granting that they had no knowledge of the taping and therefore could not have given their consent, has been violated, their trust and affection betrayed at the altar of one man’s ego.

But the video-taking strayed into criminal activity after the footage became commercial material; and along with Kho who created the footage, those who accessed the material, copied it, and then marketed it and made a profit from it must be held accountable.

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WE must also remember that this isn’t the first such “video scandal” to erupt in our faces. Prior to this, as my fellow columnist Michael Tan wrote some months ago, we were all agog over the “Dumaguete Sex Scandal,” the “Bacolod Sex Scandal” and even the “La Salle Sex Scandal,” all involving young couples who were foolish enough to have their sexual encounters recorded on video.

Note, too, that Optical Media Board chairman Edu Manzano has been engaged in a campaign against those selling, or allowing the sale of, videos showing children being sexually abused and exploited. Some of these titles, if I remember right, even made a selling point of “Rape of Minors!” and “Child Sexual Abuse!”

But against the current furor over Dr. Kho’s sexcapades, the righteous anger and moralistic outrage and the fuss made over these heinous products pale considerably in comparison.

Note, too, that in most of these scandals, it’s the women who come in for particular scrutiny. Whatever we might think of a tearful Katrina Halili decrying the “pambababoy” or defilement done to her, we can’t help but feel for her, knowing how, in Philippine society, no matter how emancipated we might delude ourselves to be, women are still judged by stricter, more puritanical standards. The fate of other women, who were not themselves celebrities, involved in other video scandals was a harbinger of Katrina’s fate: some had to leave their home towns or even the country, others attempted suicide, still others found their boyfriends, fiancés or husbands abandoning them.

The Philippines is eerily unforgiving of women who make a public spectacle of their sexuality.

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ANOTHER weird thing I find is the disproportionate outrage expended on this scandal, when other scandalous events raised merely arched eyebrows or even cynical sneers.

“Nicole” and “Vanessa,” two women who made public their rape at the hands of American servicemen, while supported by the usual suspects of leftists and feminists, were met by skeptical and even hostile government officials and a doubting public. And despite the fact that it wasn’t just only the women who were violated – our sovereignty, our legal system, and dignity as a nation had been raped as well – national anger in the scale we were experiencing these days has been hardly palpable.

And while I admire Senator Bong Revilla for delivering his impassioned address against what he called Kho’s “perversity,” I just wish he had summoned the same scale of passion for Nicole and Vanessa.

Distasteful as it may be to compare women’s victimization, at least Katrina et al. had sex with Hayden out of their own volition, if not desire. Nicole and Vanessa – despite their accounts of rape – are told only that “they asked for it.”