A STUDY in 2022 revealed that two in 10 internet-using children aged 12 to 17 in the Philippines had experienced online sexual abuse in 2021 alone. This is because internet service providers (ISPs) have failed to install blocking software, as demanded by law.
Few people would argue nowadays that the sexual abuse and exploitation of children is one of the most heinous crimes that humans are capable of. That awareness came after the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was passed in November 1989.
Before then, tolerance, leniency and a lax attitude toward sexual acts with children were the practice in many countries. In 1992, the Philippine Congress, thanks to the lobbying of children’s rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), passed a strict child protection law known as Republic Act (RA) 7610.
The general tolerance and leniency toward pedophilia and the silence of the Catholic Church about it have a long history, as was clearly seen in the public response to Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel “Lolita,” about the sexual abuse of a minor that justifies pedophilia. It was considered pornography and even banned in some countries.
But in 1958, after the United States Customs Office deemed it unobjectionable, the novel was published and released in the US. There was some controversy over it, but it became an instant bestseller — it sold 100,000 copies in its first three weeks of release — and, as a perceived consequence, the instances of child sexual abuse it described were tolerated.
So, too, in the Philippines today. The denial, cover-up and tolerance of authorities and the Church allow child sexual abuse to proliferate. In an inexplicable decision under American colonial rule, the 1935 Penal Code set 12 years old as the age of sexual consent, legitimizing an adult’s sexual acts with a child. Civil society or the Catholic Church did not object to or challenge it.
So long as a 12-year-old girl answered “opo” (yes) when asked if she wanted to have sex with an older man, that was considered sufficient to establish her consent. Apparently, it was no crime or grave sin then.
But at that time, the Church preached that missing Sunday Mass was a mortal sin if done intentionally, and one could go and burn in hell for missing it for no good reason. But an adult to have sex with a child who was likely forced to say yes was overlooked because it was not a crime in civil law until 2022.
The youngest age a girl could get married in the Catholic Church under canon law was 14; for a boy, it’s 16. Philippine civil law maintained those ages until the 1988 Family Code raised it to 18 for both sexes. The Church must follow civil law.
Age of consent raised
Lawmakers had resisted any demand from children’s rights NGOs to change the age of consent until March 2022, when RA 11648 made any sexual intercourse with a child 16 and younger a serious crime and is automatically considered statutory rape. This law holds that a child 16 and younger cannot consent willingly. Whether the older person knew the age of the child or not is irrelevant. Even if the child said he or she was 18, the act is still a crime. Another law passed in 2022, RA 11596, banned child marriage, stating that it is a crime to perform or participate in any formal or informal union involving at least one person younger than 18.
But despite the passage of these laws, child sexual abuse continues to be tolerated, and in some ways has grown even worse. (To be continued)/PN
