How the Philippine Catholic Church gives ‘silent consent’ to accused paedophile priests
- Investigators claim about 20 boys and men from village of Talustusan have reported American priest Father Pius Hendricks abused them
- In the Philippines, the church has long shrugged off the presence of sex offenders and the criminal justice system often ignores the problem
The American priest’s voice echoed over the phone line, his sharp Midwestern accent softened over the decades by a gentle Filipino lilt. On the other end, recording the call, was a young man battered by shame but anxious to get the priest to describe exactly what had happened in this little island village.
“I should have known better than trying to just have a life,” the priest said in the November 2018 call. “Happy days are gone. It’s all over.”
But, the young man later explained, those days were happy only for the priest. They were years of misery for him, he said, and for the other boys who investigators say were sexually assaulted by Father Pius Hendricks.
He was just 12 – a new altar boy from a family of tenant farmers anxious for the US$1 or so he’d get for serving at Mass – when he says Hendricks first took him into the bathroom of Talustusan’s little rectory and sexually assaulted him.
“I asked why he was doing this to me,” the 23-year-old said, the confusion still with him years later. “‘It’s a natural thing’,” he said the priest told him. “‘It’s part of becoming an adult.’”
The abuse continued for more than three years, he said, but he told no one until a village outsider began asking questions about the American priest’s extravagant generosity with local boys, and until he feared his brother would be the next victim. In November, he went to the police and told them what he knew.