Panamanian Erick Bairnals Shcks. GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
MANILA, Philippines – Panamanian national Erick Bairnals Shcks, who has been accused raping a Filipina, finally broke his silence Friday, claiming that he and his supposed victim engaged in “consensual sex”.
At the same time, Shcks said that the Filipina, who goes by the alias “Pamela”, had lied to him.
Shcks issued the statement a week after he left the Philippines “in a shameful way”.
Shcks admitted that he and “Pamela” engaged in sex, but stressed that it was “consensual” and that it was “never” in his nature to force people to do something for him that they didn’t want to do.
“[Pamela] lied to me about her age, she lied to be about her not having a boyfriend, she lied to me about not having a cell phone with her that night, she lied about being rendered unconscious due to some drugs I gave her, and most importantly, she lied about me raping her,” Shcks said.
Narrating his side of the story, Shcks said that Pamela invited him to dinner on April 23 through a text message sent to his friends’ cell phone and eventually met her at 5:45 p.m. They then proceeded to a restaurant of Pamela’s choice.
Shcks said that they talked about their families and his life while in Manila, among other topics “which confirmed my impression of her as a really interesting girl,” he said, adding that it was at that time when he learned that Pamela didn’t have her cellphone.
Because of that, Shcks said that Pamela even used his cell phone a lot of times that night to allegedly inform her grandmother of her whereabouts.
“ . . . It was also over dinner when she told me that she was 21 years old and does not have a boyfriend at the moment,” he said.
After dinner, Shcks said that “Pamela” told him that she wanted to dance and have some drinks and this was why they took a cab to a bar on Makati Avenue called Time.
“In the bar, we had couple of drinks and a really good time. At that time, she was already kissing me and hugging me in front of the members of the staff and one of them took a picture of us,” he said.
Thinking that the place was kind of empty and boring, Shcks said that he suggested that they went to his apartment instead – an invitation that Pamela “gladly accepted” although she informed him that she could not stay late.
Shcks said they went to his apartment in Le Triomphe Building, Dela Costa Street ,Salcedo Village.
“As opposed to her claims, I never forced or coerced her to come with me to my place or spend the night with me to have sex. You will see in the security camera videos when we entered my building holding each other’s hands and on the elevator going to my floor that there were no signs of me forcing her as she claimed during her interviews,” he said.
“What I only did was to embrace her on my side affectionately and kiss her on the lips which was cut short when we reached the floor of my unit,” Shcks said in contrast to Pamela’s official statement at the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group last April 24 when she claimed that he “embraced her facing each other while she tried to set herself free but was unable to do so.”
Shcks said that two of his friends were in his unit when they arrived, and one of them slept on the couch that was why they needed to go to his bedroom.
“She did not refuse, nor said ‘no’”, he said, adding that she willingly made her way to his bedroom.
“In the room, we continued talking and listening music from my computer as the night went on, we began to engage in sexual intercourse which she shared with me willingly and with passion,” he said.
Shcks said that after having sex and some conversation over a medical condition Pamela had, she told him that she needed to leave.
Thinking that it might be dangerous for Pamela to take a cab alone that night, Shcks said that he asked her to spend the night instead and to just go home in the morning.
Saying that her grandmother was looking for her, Shcks said that he told Pamela to call her and let her know that she was OK.
“She took my phone again to make a call, immediately said goodbye to me and made her way out of my room,” he said.
“You can also view from the security camera videos some shots of her entering the elevator normally and I was surprised to see in the surveillance video on her way to concierge that she has a cellphone in her hands when she told me earlier that she did not have her cell phone with her.”
He also said that the security camera showed that there were no signs of her being damaged physically as a rape victim should be. “She was calm. She was not drugged or did not seem to have come from an unconscious state as she claimed to have been,” Shcks added.
Shcks said that the next day, Pamela sent him another text message while he was at work asking to meet with him. He said that they met that afternoon in a fastfood chain near his house and when he got there and saw her, “she gave me a kiss on the lips [and] the next thing I know, several agents in casual clothes grabbed me.”
Shcks said that he even thought that he was being kidnapped, and said that he remembered a man yelling “stop raping Filipinas.”
Shcks was detained in CIDG on April 24, but was released on April 30 declaring the validity of his immunity from arrest and detention under articles 29, 31, and 37 of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.
He was declared Persona Non-Grata on May 11 upon submission of the resolution from the Panama Government not to waive his immunity and to leave the Philippines “within 24 hours”.
“It is an understatement to say that this whole experience have created a lot of permanent damage on me. More than that, it has jeopardized the image of my country with the Filipino pople.”
“I keep replaying that incident with [Pamela] time and again in my head and I know in my heart that the only mistake I made was trust her,” he said.
Pamela, in a statement to the Women and Children Protection Division of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in Camp Crame, said that she was only 19 years old.
Recalling her own version of the incident, Pamela also said that when she entered Shcks’ room, she saw some papers on his bed that had green tobacco. Pamela said that she inquired what it was, to which Shcks allegedly answered that it was marijuana.