When he was a little boy, Rodrigo Duterte was raped by a Jesuit priest.

That abuse molded Duterte into a violent, self — righteous control freak. Today, he is president of the Philippines.

As the world watches, Duterte is busy keeping his campaign promise to destroy his country’s drug — crime problem by killing addicts and dealers alike. His actions are defying the influential Catholic Church, which calls his antidrug policy “a reign of terror.”

Duterte’s dirty drug war has also been condemned by the U.S., the European Union, and the United Nations. When challenged for his brutality, Duterte claims to be taking the action that is necessary to save the next generation of Filipino children from the horrors of addiction. It’s as though he’s trying to do for them what nobody could do for Duterte the child — protect them from abuse. During an interview with Al — Jazeera, Duterte said the sexual abuse visited upon him by that priest had shaped his character, his politics, and “how you look at the world and how you form your values.”

“Duterte has said the sexual abuse visited upon him by the priest shaped his character and his politics.”

Rodrigo Duterte became a man of dramatic action early on in his adult life. At law school, when another student insulted him on the basis of his ethnicity, Duterte shot him. Today, Duterte is the ruling power elite. He’s using the National Police to carry out extrajudicial killings, and he strongly supports vigilante action. He encourages citizens to open fire on anyone they believe to be a drug criminal, and for him, this includes junkies, whom he says destroy society, as surely as a rape can destroy a woman and her family: “If I were a father and you raped my daughter, do you think I would wait for the police?” Duterte said. “Do you think my anger would wait? I would kill you. I encourage vigilantes. Yes.”
In the ten months since he’s been in office, Duterte has presided over the slaughter of at least 6,000 additional suspected drug addicts and their suppliers. I say “additional” because, in his previous job as mayor of Davao City (population 1.6 million), he led and paid for the mass murder of an estimated 1,700 people, according to former members of the Davao Death Squad, which he organized almost 30 years ago.

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WHEN he was campaigning for the presidency with a law — and — order message, Rodrigo Duterte vowed that, if elected, he would eliminate 100,000 addicts and dealers within the first six months of his administration. That number — to be killed by the state or its vigilante citizens — blew people’s minds. Within hours of Duterte being sworn in, the tactics he used in Davao City were being applied nationwide, and with each passing night, more and more bodies were found in the streets (up to 27 were dumped into the alleys and roads on a single night in Manila alone).

A few months later, President Duterte updated his plans and expectations. He did this using utterly bizarre language containing a huge historical inaccuracy. But it got the point across. He had initially underestimated the size of the meth problem. But now, he said, he’s got the numbers right: “Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there is three million drug addicts in my country, the Philippines. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them. Killing that many would finish the [drug] problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition.”

That Hitler murdered six million Jews and not three is not the issue here. What is crucial to understand is that this former prosecutor who became a mayor and is now president is not engaged in hyperbole. His goal truly is to kill them all. And in recent days, Duterte has upped the figure to almost four million.

Let me put this into American terms: The population of the Philippines is something over 100 million. Ours is more than three times that. So the equivalent would be if an American president vowed to kill between nine and twelve million U.S. citizens. Roughly, this would be like murdering every resident of New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Of course, any American leader suggesting anything of that nature would immediately be branded a lunatic.

The thing is, Duterte isn’t just entertaining some twisted fantasy of wiping out what offends him; he’s been making his dreams of vengeance and control come true. And he’s clearly loving the job.

Duterte — whose aides like to compare him to President Trump — has a push — pull relationship with the press. He puffs up like a blowfish when he’s on camera, but he’s also endorsed the idea of murdering reporters who displease him: “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a bitch.”

Politically, Duterte’s fanatical obsession with drug crime has served him well. He has been awash in the blood of innocents for more than two decades and he continues to get away with it, only now it’s on a much bigger scale. He has perfected his own version of the populism of violence like few others since World War II.

Back then, Germany and Italy were under the sway of charismatic, murderous populist leaders who stoked people’s fears into hatred and told them that if they did as they were told all would be well. Years before he occupied the Malacañang (presidential) Palace in Manila, Duterte was already ordering the executions that earned him the names “Death Squad Mayor of Davao City,” “the Punisher,” and “Dirty Harry of Davao.”

“One victim was fed to a crocodile, and hundreds more were dumped into the ocean.”

To win the presidency, Duterte rallied the angry, the fearful, and the frustrated of an entire nation as he had done for decades as a civil servant. Duterte did it day in and day out, year after year, beginning when he was a prosecuting attorney in the late seventies. Almost 40 years later, he got the people of the Philippines — who are even more pious than Americans — to support a heartless, illegal war on local drug addicts and dealers without the benefit of arrest and trial.

“There is no due process in my mouth,” Duterte has said. On another occasion, he boasted, “My city is the ninth safest city in the world. How do you think I did that?” And yet, according to National Police stats, Davao City has the worst murder rate in the country.

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A FEW years before Duterte first got involved in fighting drug crime, almost 40 years ago, the nation’s Catholic bishops said drug addicts were “worthy of the highest punishment.” In 1988, the Philippine Supreme Court called drug addicts “useless if not dangerous,” akin to a “living dead,” while declaring that dealers “deserve no less than the maximum penalty.” Together, the country’s dominant religious institution and highest court helped create a powerful sense of “otherness” about addicts and dealers. For Duterte, these people have more or less stopped being human. Meanwhile, physician and medical anthropologist Gideon Lasco reports from Manila that most meth addicts there rarely commit acts of violence — their main crime is buying the drug, which sells for about two dollars a hit.

Duterte’s drug war has also resulted in more than 40,000 arrests, mostly of users; prisons are now bursting at the seams. One jail, designed to hold 800 inmates, had 3,800 when this article went to press. Those inmates have to take turns sleeping on the floor while the others stand. Communicable diseases run riot in those conditions. But the average Filipino who voted for Duterte has been primed by the culture and Duterte’s propaganda to believe that whatever fate befalls an addict is acceptable.

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AS the sun rises over the Davao Gulf, a helicopter flies out of the city limits. It climbs to 1,000 feet and hovers above an empty field. Suddenly, the chopper’s side door opens. Within seconds, a man is ejected, his body cartwheeling, buffeted by the wind. His hands are cuffed behind his back. He screams for the eight seconds it takes his body to plow into the earth, at 175 miles per hour.

In the helicopter, Duterte, the man who has just thrown the accused drug dealer to his death, smiles. Brilliant and calculating, the charismatic then — mayor of the city of Davao knows he has just added another shocking tile to the mosaic of his public persona. He tells a journalist to make sure it becomes part of his legend. He was on the march toward whatever destiny his people’s whipped — up fears, and his own genius, had in store for him.

Later, after the story of the man who flew from the helicopter was stitched into the public’s consciousness, Duterte would deny that he had committed that grotesque murder, and then back away from the denial in a kind of wink to his followers, assuring them he is that kind of bold protector of the people.

Shrewd and quick on his feet, Duterte knew exactly what he was doing. Executing that alleged dealer fulfilled the forbidden fantasies of millions of decent people who had been taught to fear drug crime and brought them into his orbit. He became their guy, their champion.

Always the complicated man, Duterte has been socially progressive on other issues. Reporting done in 2002 by the New York Times and later by Time magazine detailed the then — mayor’s strong support for the rights of women and the LGBTQ community, including their rights to pursue opportunities in public service and in business. “Everyone,” Duterte said, “has a right to be happy.”

However, when recently asked about mass rehabilitation instead of mass murder for drug addicts, President Duterte shrugged off the notion of an alternative to what he’s doing, taking refuge in the fact that “there isn’t money in the budget to build rehab centers.”

After Duterte began to govern the entire country, a middle — aged man named Edgar Matobato started to speak into microphones, under oath. He’s a credible — sounding fellow who says he’s a former member of Duterte’s Davao Death Squad. Matobato testified before a hearing of the Philippine Senate, calmly describing how he had been paid by Mayor Duterte, code name “Charlie Mike,” to slaughter those put onto the death squad’s hit list by Duterte himself. Matobato described summary executions, including one victim who was fed to a crocodile, and dumping hundreds more into the ocean, their bodies punctured and slashed.

In the aftermath of the fall of the American — backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, much of the country was still in chaos, including Davao City. That’s when an infusion of meth produced by Chinese drug cartels entered the life of the city. Until Duterte established a strict curfew and his hard line on crime, the city was in trouble.

Today, almost 29 years later, if you visit the center of Davao, you will probably experience a safe, vibrant commercial district with pleasant people and fine food. That’s not where the blood — letting is underway. Nor is it evident on the city’s eight white — sand beaches. It’s happening at night, in the poorest neighborhoods.

Since his “kill them all” rhetoric and policies have gone nationwide, the Duterte administration claims to have cut crime by more than 40 percent. Except for murder — which has shot up by more than 50 percent.

While running for president, Duterte boasted that his death squad had murdered 1,700 drug criminals during his 22 years as Davao mayor. But according to Edgar Matobato’s testimony before the Philippine Senate, Duterte also ordered the death squad to take out people who had nothing to do with drug crime, including a millionaire hotelier who had pissed him off, and a boyfriend of Duterte’s sister.

Today in the Philippines, anyone can commit murder and get away with it if the victim has the remotest connection to drugs, and that includes being a hapless addict who hurts nobody but himself and his own family. Duterte has even offered to pay a bounty to any citizen who murders an addict or a dealer.

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PRESIDENT Duterte once said that he would kill his own son — Paolo, who is now vice mayor of Davao — if he discovered the young man had become a drug user. Duterte’s public declarations have created a free — fire zone in the most drug — impacted communities of the Philippines, which translates, of course, into the poorest and least likely to vote.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines is acutely aware of the class aspect of the slaughter unleashed by Duterte. The Church has a long history of championing the cause of the poor, especially as they are impacted by policies of the state. The Church was a key player in the overthrow of two corrupt Philippine regimes in the last 31 years.

Eighty percent of the country’s people are Catholic, so when the Church repeatedly appealed to Duterte to stop the slaughter, you might have expected a substantive response. But Duterte ignored the cries from the pulpit for Christian compassion.

In February, on a warm Saturday in the capital city, an estimated 10,000 Catholics marched to demand an end to the slaughter. This was no easy midday protest. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines called upon parishioners to gather at 4:30 A.M. at the Quirino Grandstand, the same massive venue where Duterte previously held a huge campaign rally.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the conference, addressed the early morning crowd of deeply worried but determined Catholics: “Why did we summon you here before dawn? It’s because it is during these hours that we find bodies on the streets or near trash cans. Dawn, which is supposed to be the hour of a new start, is becoming an hour of tears and fears.”

The day before the rally, the regime filed criminal charges against one of Duterte’s most vocal opponents for allegedly running a drug trafficking ring using criminals in the country’s largest prison when she was justice secretary in the previous administration. Senator Leila de Lima is also a former human rights commissioner, and one brave woman. She says what seems obvious to many — that the charges against her are fake, trumped up, and designed to intimidate her into ending her opposition to Duterte’s dirty drug war. She joined the Bishops’ demonstration as a declaration of solidarity.

“For as long as I can,” she told the rally in Manila, “I will continue to fight. They cannot silence me.” De Lima spoke even as she was expecting to be arrested by the National Police, who are now under the command of a Duterte protégé. Duterte himself urged her to hang herself.

Manila bishop Broderick Pabillo told the French Press Agency, “I am alarmed and angry at what’s happening because this is something that is regressive. It does not show our humanity.”

Duterte has denounced the Church as “the most hypocritical institution” in the Philippines because it opposes the very real carnage created by his policies. But maybe it’s also because it failed to protect him when he was a vulnerable child.

Since becoming president of the Philippines, Duterte has taken a machete to the education budget, lopping off 25 percent. He reassigned those funds to the police and military. But he’s made no effort to reallocate any of those taxpayer dollars to rehabs for addicts.

This is where things stand. The body count has surpassed 8,000. “Dirty Harry” Duterte is very popular with about half of his country’s citizens. Armed with that political capital, he has asked the legislature to change the law so that police may start arresting children as young as nine if they are suspected of a drug crime. Where he would put them is anyone’s guess.

President Trump has invited Duterte to visit the White House. Meanwhile, the bloody drug war continues. Thousands down, three million more to go.

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It’s PERSONAL

From 1963 to 1980, I was a reporter in the streets of New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, and Detroit as those cities were being battered by drug crime. I hated seeing the destruction and being afraid for my wife and little kids as we walked down the streets. There were times I was so frustrated and angry that I might have welcomed a strongman who could just stop it.

As in the Philippines, the criminalization of drugs and the resulting drug crime in America have left decades of bloodstains on the sidewalks, alleys, and streets. The first time I saw that crimson evidence of violence, I was 22 and new to Chicago. The blood was fresh and there was a lot of it. I almost passed out, but the tough old cop I was traveling with grabbed me by my arm and said, “Easy kid, you’ll get used to it; we all do.”

So now, all these years later, I am doing it again. Back at yet another gut — wrenching crime scene where pain is painted on the sidewalk in deep, dark red. I am standing next to a pool of drying blood, the stain of another human being’s last tormented moment on earth. This time it’s not outside a bar where it ended with a knife to the gut. It’s not the aftermath of a gunfight, or the scene of a bombing. This time, the bloodstain is soaking into the ground near the entrance to a Chicago high — rise apartment house. It’s probably the 50th time in my journalism career that I’ve retraced the final moments of a private person who died in a public way.

I really shouldn’t have come to this crime scene. This time, I’m not on assignment. And the drying blood? It belongs to my son. He’s the good — looking one next to me in the old photo (left). About seven years after that picture was taken, Nathan James Kamen, a natural foods chef, loving father, and gifted martial artist, but also a drunk and a drug addict, took his last drink in Chicago, while I was asleep in Washington, D.C.

The ringing phone shook me awake.

“Jeff Kamen? Detective Shaunessy, Chicago homicide. Did you have a son named Nathan? Yes? Well, sorry. He died last night. Suicide,” The cop on the phone sounded almost bored as he spoke. “Yeah, sorry. He jumped off a 19th — story balcony of a Near North apartment house. Nothing we could do. Sorry.”

Wide — awake and strangely numb, I was counting seconds in my head, wondering if my firstborn was aware as he fell that in less than four seconds, his 6’1", 230 — pound body would smash into the sidewalk at about 75 miles per hour, and the pain he’d carried around inside himself for years would be no more.

Damaged as “the Bear” was by his daily consumption of alcohol and drugs, I don’t think he set out to kill himself. He was in love with a terrific woman and he adored his little daughter. More likely, he’d gotten drunk or stoned and decided to balance atop the balcony safety rail and fell, ending a life of torment that began with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism and a first drink when he was 14.

Had Rodrigo Duterte — or someone like him — been in charge of our country early on in my son’s life of addiction, Nate’s corpse would have been in the street a whole lot sooner, or maybe he would have steered a different course. But probably not.

It’s been seven years. I’m still in shock. I miss him every day.

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BETRAYAL
TWO YEARS AGO, Rodrigo Duterte revealed that, when he was a kid, he had been sexually molested by a priest. This was back in the days when church officials routinely relocated predator priests instead of having them arrested. Duterte’s abuser was the same cleric whose crimes forced the Jesuit order to pay out $16 million to the priest’s American victims.

As is often the case with victims of child sex abuse, Duterte’s attitudes toward sex are pathological. He is a verbal exhibitionist. He boasts of his Viagra — fueled potency, telling anyone who will listen that, at 71, he services four women: two wives and two mistresses. Commenting on the gang rape of an attractive tourist, Duterte complained that, as mayor, he should have been at the front of the line of men who penetrated the victim. Later, Duterte apologized, saying he was only making a joke.

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES / DONDI TAWATAO; SHUTTERSTOCK / JIAWANGKUN;