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MANILA, Philippines – Schools are meant to be a safe place for students to learn and grow, but the cyclical stories of abuse within campuses continue to disprove that, with students from both Bacoor National High School (BNHS) and the Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA) coming forward as sexual harassment victims of their teachers.
BNHS and PHSA are only two of the numerous schools in the country with recorded cases. INQUIRER.net has compiled a list of schools with reported sexual abuse incidents as of posting.
GRAPHIC: Jerome Cristobal
Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU)
Public allegations of sexual abuse at ADMU date back to 2017. In 2019, Ateneo students and faculty protested the growing number of sexual abuse cases when victims came forward in various social media platforms to identify three professors as alleged abusers.
READ: Protests vs sexual harassment rock Ateneo
Bacoor National High School (BNHS)
BNHS students came forward on social media last week sharing their experiences of alleged sexual abuse, compelling both the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Commission on Human Rights to launch separate investigations into the cases. In one account, a student was repeatedly asked to go to the alleged perpetrator’s house.
READ: 6 Cavite teachers facing probe for ‘grooming’ minors
Bulacan State University Laboratory High School (BulSU-LHS)
BulSU-LHS students came forward in 2020, with one student alleging that a married teacher solicited sexual acts from them in exchange for exemptions in a project, according to an article from Preen.ph. As a response, alumni formed the “Safe Spaces LHS Now” group to support student victims.
Marikina Science High School
Students of Marikina Science High School also came forward with their stories of alleged sexual mistreatment in the hands of a faculty member, prompting their student government to issue a statement and to organize counseling sessions for victims with the Gender and Development Office of Marikina City.
Miriam College high school (MCHS)
Students of MCHS came forward online in 2020, detailing cases that ranged from sexual harassment to pedophelia. Miriam College’s Women and Gender Institute has since vowed to seek accountability among officials and hosted safe space group discussions for students to express their grievances.
READ: Miriam College students bare harassment complaints
Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA)
In 2022, Vice World News broke a story detailing cases of alleged sexual abuses committed by a faculty member. This has sparked a controversy that prompted DepEd to ask the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct a probe on the accounts of physical, verbal and sexual abuse endured by the students.
READ: Normalization of abuse
Quezon City Science High School
Quezon City High School also had a string of sexual harassment allegations in 2020, when students came forward with their stories of abuse from employees.
READ: Sexual abuse in PH schools: The silent scream of students
St. Paul College Pasig
Under the hashtag “#SPCPSQUAREUP,” students from St. Paul College Pasig came forward with stories of sexual abuse from faculty, with other students joining them in collective outrage. In response, some students formed the PARISUKATAN to combat sexual harrassment in the school.
St. Theresa’s College (STC)
Like many others in the list, STC students came forward in 2020 under their own hashtag, “#STCDOBETTER.” In 2021, STC survivors told Rappler details of their cases, with one case having a professor groom an underaged girl and the school failing the underaged girl’s behavioral grade.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros, who chairs the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality, has filed Senate Resolution No. 168, seeking an inquiry into sexual harassment cases across the country.
“Teachers and perpetrators who harass students have no business remaining in schools in the company of young students,” she said in a previous statement.
She cited the aforementioned cases of PHSA, BNHS and STC as supporting incidents for the resolution, with PHSA having a separate resolution as well.
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