The top-rating game show of ‘Willing Willie’ hosted by Willie Revillame and his new home station TV5 reluctantly apologized after the segment in his game show set-off a blazed of criticisms for featuring a ‘macho dancing of a six-year-old boy.
Revillame and the TV5 network were accused by the government of a ‘child abuse’ over the incident, which caused in the internet – great uproar labeling him a “National Jerk” in a Facebook critic.
In a regular column ‘Kuwento’ of Benjamin Pimentel on INQUIRER.net condemned the episode on March 12 for treating the boy like garbage.
Corazon Soliman, Social Welfare Secretary said in a statement on Monday “The sequence shows the boy gyrating in a distasteful manner.”
Soliman said, “Children doing the acts such as imitating adult sexy-dances in exchange for money and at the expense of being ridiculed and laugh at by hundreds of people clearly traumatized the child.”
“The board has received numerous complaints after seeing the show where the boy was seen crying while being forced to simulate a striptease,” said Mary Grace Poe Llamanzares , chief of the ‘Movie and Television Review’ and ‘Cl(–foul word(s) removed–)ification Board’.
“Willie Revillame and TV5 deeply and sincerely apologized for the segment of the show featuring the boy which may be offensive to the viewers who have found in bad taste”, they said in a statement Tuesday.
“We wish to clear out the issue that there was never any intention to ‘humiliate’ or ‘abuse’ Jan-Jan or any of our contestants on the show,” they said.
Jan-Jan rose from a poor family and earned P10, 000 from the show for the effort.
Revillame said, “He is noticeably doing it with a heavy heart, but he has to do it for his family.”
“The boy appeared having tears or even sad not because he was being forced to dance, but because he felt the dance was ‘serious’ and he was playing a role.”
The statement read, “The Jan-Jan did not smile because his upper-front teeth was missing and because of the presence of former basketball Bonel Balingit thought as a scary giant for the boy.”
The video footage of the show has drawn more than half a million hits in YouTube and rapidly spread out to other social networking websites.
Follow the link below to watch the video…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4AOdpWU6w0[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_INVUKGwV9A[/youtube]