[Trigger warning: Mentions of pedophilia, grooming]
We all know the saying, “Age is just a number, jail is just a room,” right?
Well, apparently, that doesn’t seem to be ringing true in the Philippines. In fact, it’s even being celebrated for some ungodly reason.
Men, in particular, have been proud to post about the stories of their marriages and wives on social media. Oftentimes, they even mask their stories by including their age gap, how they “met again,” and the like.
One good example is a post by a man named Benedict, who recently posted how he and his wife had met when she was a Grade 5 student, and he was their class’ advisory teacher. In the post, he included a photo of the said class picture and said, “God is really working wonders.”
In his post, Benedict recounted how he was active in church, and how he first had a successful career in banking, then how he had worked in Uganda for 14 months, then in Qatar for a year, then a full-time college professor for 4 years, until he became a public-school teacher.
It was in his first-year teaching in a public school where he first met his now-wife—a then Grade 5 student. When the girl became a high-school student, that was the time he noticed that she was “making moves” so he’d notice her.
“Umamin naman sya sa akin na kinikilig daw sya noon pag tinutukso siya sa akin ng nga classmates niya at doon daw sya na develop sa akin. Hanggang sa hinahanap hanap na nyang tuksuhin sya sa akin ng mga classmates nya. Pero, pag kinakausap ko naman sya nagagalit sa akin. Tapos, pag pareho kaming absent pagpasok naming ay walang tigil na tuksuhan kung saan daw kami nag date. Kunyari naman galit na galit sya sa mga classmates nya, [She admitted to me that she used to get giddy when our classmates teased her about me, and that’s when she started developing feelings for me. Eventually, she began to long for our classmates to tease her about me. But whenever I talked to her, she would get mad at me. Then, when we were both absent from class, her classmates would nonstop tease us, asking where we went on a date. She would pretend to be really angry at them],” he said in the post.
Benedict ended his post by thanking the church group he was with “for nourishing our married life”, and also thanked “SDO Mandaluyong” for giving him “a wife to love forever.”
When the post became viral, many people criticized Benedict for grooming his then-student, now-wife, and called him out for being a pedophile. One commenter also said that upon counting the years, the girl was 15 and Benedict was 51 when they started their relationship.
Thus, it’s considered to be against the law and “never a blessing” from above.
Other social media users lamented the fact that pedophilia and grooming are normalized in the country, expressing disgust over how proud people are.
Benedict apparently posted a “public statement” that detailed more into his relationship with his wife, which practically confirmed that he had groomed his wife.
Still, social media users relentlessly called him out for being “proud” of being a groomer and pedophile and said that he should’ve known better as he was an adult.
It was weird enough that he was “flexing” this relationship around like a gold medal, and another thing that many of his supporters are also staunch religious people. It says a lot that these people who try as much as possible to shove their religious beliefs down others’ throats are the same ones that condone disgusting behavior such as this.
It’s sickening enough to see this happen on a normal basis, even more so to have people support this. One social media user was right when they said that the older generation basically allowed this to happen—thanks to the phrase “age doesn’t matter.”
Groomers and pedophiles thrive thanks to this phrase, and we shouldn’t stop calling these terrible people out.
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