DOJ chief: Child sex abuse, incest cases should not end in settlement

Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla. FILE PHOTO

The Department of Justice (DOJ) will seek the removal of amicable settlement as an option in resolving cases of incestuous rape and child abuse, according to Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla.

At a press briefing on Friday, Remulla said the DOJ would also ask the Supreme Court to draft guidelines for lower courts on handling such cases, citing the growing number of victims in the country.

“We should really treat this differently. We’re in an emergency, a state of emergency, when it comes to child sexual abuse,” Remulla said.

“It’s the legal tradition we have now that is the problem, because there are settlements happening in the court,’’ he added. “We plan on consulting the Court Administrator about this and we’re going to write to the Chief Justice so the Supreme Court can have a guideline for our tribunals about this.”

“We will also do that with other offices that handle (such cases), that they can no longer use settlements here. Our attitude on these cases should be nonnegotiable.’’

Settlements, with the victim just being paid money for the case to be dropped, will just lead to repeat violations, with the offender set “free without any remorse or accountability,” he noted.

Grim findings

According to Dr. Bernadette Madrid, executive director of the Child Protection Network Foundation, as many as 2 million Filipino minors age 13 to 17 experienced sexual violence in 2020.

She also cited the findings of a 2016 Unicef research—the National Baseline Study on Violence against Children: Philippines—showing that eight of 10 children and youth age 13 to 24 had experienced some form of violence in the home, school, workplace or community, or even while on a date.

“While many of the perpetrators were strangers and friends to the child, the majority of them were family members—brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins and even female perpetrators like mothers and sisters,” Madrid said in an Inquirer interview.

Boys are more at risk than girls, with the prevalence rates at 81.5 percent and 78.4 percent, respectively, according to the Unicef study, which conducted a survey of 3,866 children and youth age 13 to 24.

Scant reporting

It also found that about 78.8 percent of children age 13 to 18 years had encountered violent experiences at some point in their lives.

Madrid also cited another study, one done by the United States National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, showing cases of online sexual abuse and exploitation increasing by “265 percent” in the Philippines during the pandemic, compared to the period before the health crisis.

She also noted that only 1 percent of abused children, especially victims of incest, reported their ordeal to another family member.

“If the perpetrator is a relative and the child told (another) relative about it, the usual response is not to report (to the authorities), to even tell the child that ‘just keep this a secret (because) this is embarrassing to the family,’’’ Madrid explained.

From 2011 to 2016, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) attended to 2,770 incest victims, majority of them girls between ages 14 and 17, with some below 5 years old.

From 2019 to 2022, the DSWD recorded 851 incest cases involving girls and one case where the victim was a boy.

Remulla said he planned to commission a new survey on the issue and improve the DOJ’s coordination with the DSWD, local governments and the police on prosecution of offenders and the protection of their victims.

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