RAQUEL said her daughter did not have to apologize. They are shown here before the storm, with Charice serenading her during her birthday celebration last year.
Raquel Pempengco, mother of international singer Charice, said she had accepted her estranged daughter “for who she is” and there was no need for the latter to apologize for being a lesbian.
“I had known for quite a while,” Raquel told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a phone interview on Friday. Charice confirmed it when she turned 18. “She confessed through an e-mail,” Raquel said in a press con held at their Marikina home, also on Friday.
“I went through that myself,” she said in Filipino. “But I did not turn my back on my family.” She was a lesbian, Raquel said, before she was married to Charice’s father.
She admitted asking Charice to keep her sexual preference secret. “She has a name to protect and a career to sustain,” Raquel said.
She never wanted to speak out about their rift, which resulted in Charice leaving their home and staying with an unnamed family in Cabuyao, Laguna, Raquel said. It was Charice, she pointed out, who started publicly talking about their issues.
“I wanted to break my silence many times before, but I chose to be a mother,” she said in a statement sent to Inquirer.
In an interview with the entertainment press at the recent Yahoo! OMG Awards presscon, Charice said she didn’t mind being seen in public with girlfriend Alyssa Quijano, of the singing group AKA Jam.