The River Virgins. An open letter to Victor Pearson & other losers

To the Virgins, to make much of Time:

Virgins or not, listen! Here is the opening stanza of one of the English Robert Herrick's most famous poems that I memorized more than 50 years ago, when I was an innocent 16 in high school yet in the sleepy town of Asingan in Pangasinan in Central Luzon, the Philippines:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.

Today Wikipedia tells me that in those Elizabethan days in England, dying had 2 meanings, to my surprise - and delight: physical death and orgasm. Emphasis on orgasm, as it just so happens that deliriously shivering virgins have much to do with my version of your story, Victor Pearson.

Now then, thinking of those hundreds of River Virgins in the Philippines, I have a question to all the women of the world who celebrated today, 08 March 2011 as International Women´s Day, IWD:

What happens when the men lead you astray?

Women! Today is the centenary of IWD. 100 years of what? For all your getting freedom for your sex, for all your getting equal rights for your gender, for all your getting equal opportunities for all women - for all your getting, get understanding! A fact of life is, if you don't mind the men, the men won't mind you. If you don't disabuse the men, the men will abuse you.

Women will never be free as long as men are free to be licentious. If you don't believe me, ask Victor Pearson.

Those in italics, in 14 words, that is what I see as the untold story within the story that Monster Jimenez as Director is trying to tell in the internationally award-winning documentary movie Kano from ArkeoFilms (Philippines). Subtitled "An American and His Harem" with Mario Cornejo as Producer, Kano is a documentary film on not-so-innocent young girls who happen to be Filipinos like me and a dirty old man who happens to be an American, Americano: Kano the man. Kano the film portrays the life and loves of American US Marine and Vietnam war hero, you Victor Pearson who came to the Philippines and spent 2 decades spending your monthly pension of about US$3,000 (Rina Jimenez-David, 08 March 2011, inquirer.net) - a fortune in these parts - on countless young girls who were willing to exchange their virginity softly for your hard cash.

I can't imagine hundreds of deliriously shivering virgins in the hands of one man!

Men are monsters with women who are attracted to men who have the money they think they cannot do without. Money is not the root of all devils - love of money is the root of all devious plans. From both sides of the gender track.

Tuesday, 01 March 2011, JAQ and Linda and I went to the documentary film showing of Kano at the mini movie theater U-View located at the basement of the Fully Booked Bookstore in Bonifacio Global City in the early evening. Little theater, max of 60 people. The showing was by invitation only. Coratec Jimenez, General Manager of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority and mother of Kano director Coreen "Monster" Jimenez, gave us complimentary tickets to get in. JAQ, Linda and Coratec are friends, all alumni of the Asian Institute of Management.

Here I am thinking like the Ilocano that I am. The word kano in Ilokano (or Ilocano) means "according to" or "reportedly" or "That's the claim." In addition, "It is said" or equivalent is a good translation of the word, but only on the condition that what was said may not be those exact words stated. Like, "Idiay haremmo, sika, Victor Pearson, duapulo ket dua a tawen nga inasawam iti gasutgasut nga balbalasitang a saannmo nga asawa. Kano." Translation: In your harem, you Victor Pearson for 22 years had sexual intercourse with hundreds of young girls, none of them your wife. They say. As used here, kano is an allegation, an assertion without proof.

You Victor Pearson are guilty Kano. You know what I mean. Let me now hold the evidence gently in my hands.

The Village Harem at Andolawan built by you Victor Pearson - later documented by Monster Jimenez with 150 hours of footage (mostly interviews) - happened to be in the town of Ilog in Negros Occidental in Central Philippines. Ilog means river; the town of Ilog is surrounded by the longest river in the island of Negros, Ilog River, a name that is a redundancy - a double reason for me to call all those young girls who passed through the hands of Kano the man The River Virgins.

What Kano the movie has succeeded to do is win awards. It won the award for First Appearance at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam in November 2010, adjudged by the IDFA as a "debut film of disturbing power and an exceptional achievement by a new voice in the documentary, Monster Jimenez" (Dheza Marie Aguilar, 28 November 2010, abs-cbnnews.com). "The merits of the film," says Martijn te Pas of the IDFA, "are in both form and substance" (Isabel L Templo, 25 December 2010, inquirer.net). "(Jimenez) succeeds in getting a very good sketch of the situation by intimate conversations with all the women. (She) also makes very interesting choices in form."

Closer home, Kano also won as the Philippines' Best Documentary at the 12th CineManila International Film Festival in December 2010 (CD, 04 December, starmometer.com).

What Kano the movie has failed to do is important to me: It has failed to tell the film's audience that they are all losers - those in the film and those outside.

Loser: Kano the man, you Victor Pearson, because you knowingly lured those young girls, 18 and below, to a life of sex for money, not unlike those in a brothel. Loser, as in hopeless case, one bankrupt with better ideas about winning another's favor without losing one's soul and/or buying another's.

Losers: The River Virgins, losers in a game of sex, themselves bankrupt of better ideas to earn a living. When you Victor Pearson were arrested and your lair raided in August 2001, the police found pornographic video tapes and pictures of nude girls (GPB, 16 June 2009, ilog.com). Poverty is not an excuse for pornography. The River Virgins didn't make much of time; they made much of you Victor Pearson. Even today, they are still making much of you. "His many wives stick by him," says The ProPinoy Project (12 December 2010, propinoy.net). They can afford to smile. These are the hard-up girls making hard cash from the hard-ons of a man.

Losers: All of us, Kano viewers or not, as long as we are wise monkeys and see not, hear not, say not.

Watching Kano down there at the basement of Fully Booked Bookstore and listening to the audience laugh, I couldn't help but think that up there somewhere in Metro Manila where you Victor Pearson have 2 houses maintained by your mistresses and in the Visayas where your other mistresses live, they are laughing. I mean the mistresses are laughing, their mothers too. They must enjoy their orgasms with you Victor Pearson. Orgasms of money?

There is only one married couple who aren't rejoicing - the one with their house incomplete because you Victor Pearson cut off your financial assistance to them when their young daughter filed a case of rape against Kano the man, and won. The parents have been trying to convince her to retract, but the girl is adamant. In Kano the movie, I can sense the girl is telling the truth, her parents are not. They are not after morals - they are after money.

The film, or the story, whichever you prefer, is an indictment of loose morals - that of the young girls (and sometimes their mothers) with their innocent smiles, and that of the old man with the dirty look.

That is why I call you, Victor Pearson a loser, and the River Virgins and their mothers bigger losers. You Victor Pearson go after the pleasures of mortals; those girls, quite a few egged by their mothers, go after the pleasures of the moolah. The young girls and the not-so-young girls who belonged to you Victor Pearson were all smiles in the movie. Why were they smiling? They knew that they could always have their cake and eat it too!

In the Q&A that followed the film showing at Fully Booked, I rose to say that Kano the movie appeared to be pro-Kano the man, because he had too much dialog - he talked too much, and the movie just gave him that much leeway where he showed no remorse whatsoever. I could not feel sympathy for you Victor Pearson. Somebody in the audience said something about the people of Negros Occidental not having done anything to prevent the harem from happening, enabling you Victor Pearson to do as you damn pleased, and I had an inspiration. I rose again and said, "Now I can define enabling like this: All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

After Kano the movie won the Amsterdam documentary award, Monster Jimenez visited you Victor Pearson at the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa and gave you a copy of the film (Gomez as cited). "He saw it and liked it," Monster said. Of course, I say now. Perhaps in trying hard to be objective, the film magnifies the man (you Victor Pearson sees nothing wrong with what you have done and continue to do) and minimizes the women (they see nothing wrong with what they have done and continue to do). I wanted to but I didn't say this in the Q&A: "I'm a writer; if I allowed Victor Pearson that much of his mouth, I would have juxtaposed shots of documents and testimonies claiming otherwise." I didn't want to look like you, Victor Pearson, the villain.

In fact, Victor Pearson, you are the guilty Kano. Saan nga kano, agpayso. It's not a claim; it's the truth. Yet, Kano the story is an indictment of many: you Victor Pearson, the abuser; the ladies (and gentlemen) who were and are to this day willing victims; the local government officials who did not lift a finger in stopping the sexploits of Kano the man; the mothers who sold their daughters to the devil; the local community who did not say a word either in condemning the loose morals in their midst.

For decades! You Victor Pearson came to live in the village of Andolawan in the municipality of Ilog in Negros Occidental in 1979. You came, you saw, you conquered the virgins. In 2001, you were arrested and charged with multiple counts of rape, mostly against minors. In between those years, you put up your harem, slowly but surely. That means that for 22 years you Victor Pearson and many of the River Virgins were living not dangerously but deliriously, if not deliciously. You Victor Pearson had money to burn, and hundreds of those River Virgins hundreds of times were burning with desire.

Is this an indictment of the moral depredations of capitalist society? Is this prurient proof of colonial mentality? Or are loose morals a hell of a heritage from the hundreds of years of Spanish friar subjugation of the Filipinos? No, no, no! It is not the system of government that is to blame; it is not the conquerors who are at fault; it is not the subjugated mind who is culpable - it is the flesh. For indeed, everywhere the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26: 41).

"Kano is an indictment of the system, an eloquent argument for the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill," well-known Negros' film director Peque Gallaga says (quoted by Carla Gomez, 09 February 2011, inquirer.net). I'm sorry, but that is an indictment of Peque Gallaga's logic! He is further quoted as saying, "It points all the way back to extreme poverty, in which case shame on the government, and shame on the Church that wants us to increase and multiply, when so many poor parents can't even take care of their children." I'm a Roman Catholic and I know this is the Church he is referring to. He isn't quoted as saying it, but he must have been thinking: "If there weren't an overpopulation of girls born into poor families in Ilog and Kabankalan City, which lies next to Ilog, there wouldn't have been any harem at all in Andolawan, and where would Victor Pearson be?" If you think in numbers, that's what you get. Why aren't there hundreds of Andolawan Harems in India, where there are hundreds of millions of poor people? Why aren't there hundreds of Victor Pearsons in Africa where there are hundreds of millions of people starving? Money is not an excuse for buying people. Poverty is not an excuse for selling your soul to the devil, unless you are Faustus or Mephistopheles.

Much fuss is made of you Victor Pearson as a troubled man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder; much less fuss is made of the post-traumatic indifference of that society amidst whom you Victor Pearson lived from 1979 to 2001, in and outside the village where you had your hundreds of deliriously shivering virgins!

In the village of Andolawan, Kano is not a story of love; rather, it is a story of lust. In the town of Ilog, Kano is not a story of sexual abuse; instead, it is a story of social consent. In the province of Negros Occidental, Kano is not a story of poverty in Matter; it is a story of poverty in Spirit.

By Monster Jimenez's own account, "hundreds of women passed through the doors of Pearson's complex, many of them to stay" (Felicity Tan, 25 November 2010, felicitytan.com). It was your complex, Victor Pearson; it was your harem. Hugh Hefner would have been green with envy if he knew, perhaps even Donald Trump.

During the film showing at Fully Booked, we learned that you Victor Pearson had weekly parties at the beginning: Provocation. You knew what you were doing: Mass Lure of the Innocents. And so, drinks and money flowed, especially to the young girls who danced to the delight of the males, and especially to the virgins who stayed the night and undressed, to the delight of the man. I say the first girls were stupid; the next girls were just plain dumb. Another way of saying that is this: For the first virgins to fall victim to the man's lure were innocents beguiled; for the next virgins to fall was escapism - they were trying to escape from their poverty.

What do you do when you have consenting minors, with or without consenting adults such as their mothers and society at large? You Victor Pearson will exult, Negros Occidental be damned!

Victor Pearson, again you remind me of Robert Herrick, his virgins and his poems. When Thomas Crofts describes him in The Cavalier Poets: An Anthology, he reminds me of you (quoted in Sonnets Central, sonnets.org):

Compared to such contemporaries as John Donne and George Herbert, Herrick seems light and tripping, going out of his way to demonstrate no very complex philosophical thought or religious passion... and never writing a love poem that speaks profoundly or intimately of the beloved.

Victor Pearson, your statements are always light; you are always on a sex trip; and you never speak profoundly or intimately of your beloved. You are the guilty Kano. Yet, you are not the only guilty party, even if you were the only one charged in court for 80 counts of rape and sentenced by the Kabankalan Regional Trial Court to 80 years in prison on 07 August 2002, the decision upheld on appeal by the Supreme Court of the Philippines on 25 March 2009.

J'accuse! All.

Yours provocatively,

Frank A Hilario, 08 March 2011