‘Murderous ritual’

On Sept. 18, 2019, the dream of cadet fourth class Darwin Dormitorio to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the long gray line of Philippine Military Academy (PMA) graduates abruptly ended.

The day before, he was in the hospital complaining of a stomachache; it was his second confinement in two weeks. But some hours after being discharged, he was rushed back because he was vomiting profusely. He died soon after.

Dormitorio wasn’t felled by any disease or mystery illness, but by something more insidious: the blows rained on him by fellow cadets that he mistakenly thought were his brothers.

An autopsy revealed that the 20-year-old, the youngest of three children of retired Army Col. William Dormitorio of PMA Marangal Class of 1974, died due to massive internal bleeding from damaged internal organs.

According to the initial investigation, two third-class cadets had inflicted severe hazing on Dormitorio by repeatedly punching and kicking him upon orders of the senior cadet.

The ordeal of Dormitorio, who had just joined the corps of cadets in July, happened not just once but on three occasions, and were severe enough to cause his confinement in the PMA hospital two weeks before his death. Three upperclassmen have now been identified as the likely perpetrators behind the fatal incident, the first case in the PMA in 18 years.

Malacañang led the chorus of laments at the needless death of another young man from hazing; it was a “failure in leadership as regards being negligent in not stopping this murderous ritual which has no place in a civilized society,” said presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo.

He added: “The office of the President condemns the barbaric practice of hazing in all its forms.”

Not so, it appears, for two PMA alumni who have expressed less-than-reproachful attitudes toward hazing, seemingly romanticizing it instead as a necessary rite of passage that transforms plebes into soldiers.

PNP chief Gen. Oscar Albayalde admitted he was also subjected to hazing during his time, but that he had “nothing against” his squad leader who had initiated it and was even thankful to him for helping “mold” him into what he is today. But, in the same breath, Albayalde said “hazing was never tolerated.”

Was the squad leader that tormented him punished then, and his case investigated? Albayalde didn’t say; in any case, hazing, according to him, is just “a matter of personal perception.”

Former police chief and now Sen. Bato dela Rosa, on the other hand, was heard describing Dormitorio’s death as “another case of shattered dreams.”

Last year, however, asked to comment on footage of police cadets undergoing beating and paddling, Dela Rosa said the hazing he went through at PMA made him into the person he is today and taught him discipline (“Diyan ako naging disiplinado at [kaya] ako naging [ganito] ngayon”).

There lies the problem: If the first instincts of men like Albayalde and Dela Rosa are to hedge, mince words and wax nostalgic about a horrific practice that has claimed the lives of so many young Filipinos, just because they themselves had happened to survive it and, according to them, had molded them into the successful men they are today, then the message remains garbled, the so-called condemnation less than truthful, and the commiseration over Dormitorio’s death essentially pointless.

That forked tongue is just as evident in the authorities’ words after the incident.

“Maltreatment is never and will never be a part of the academy’s mission to instruct, train and develop cadets,” said a joint PMA-Philippine National Police statement.

And yet, two other suspected cases of “maltreatment” have emerged in the wake of Dormitorio’s death, both of them his classmates who had to be confined at the military hospital after they, too, complained of abdominal pain; they are now said to be in recovery — lucky for them.

It’s not unreasonable to believe these three cases represent a vastly underreported and largely unpunished environment of continuing casual violence and harm against cadets, despite the PMA insisting the practice has been outlawed since 1997.

How many more cases like them must have ended up unreported and unaddressed over the years, likely because the victims chose to bear the pain and trauma by themselves, to prove themselves as equally tough and unyielding?

As the unending incidents of deadly hazing show, this tragic cycle of violence and death will only continue, in fraternities and military schools and elsewhere, as long as there are men who fondly thank the violence and aggression in their lives for supposedly making them who they are, and earnestly believe other people should benefit from the same bracing experience.