Rape and Culture of Silence: Both GAD and Human Rights Issues

 In the recent meeting of the Municipal Peace and Order Council (MPOC) of Sablayan last November 24, Chief of Police PLTCOL Allan Montillana Jr. and Municipal Social Welfare Officer Marie Joi Angway reported the proliferation of rape cases here in our town. Mayor Bong Marquez considered it not only very alarming but a disgusting situation. He ordered both MSWDO Angway and COP Montillana to exhaust all possibilities to mitigate the problem.

This is one of the issues of Gender and Development (GAD) that is slightly overlooked. I am writing this article right after our Gender Sensitivity Training (GST) +++ in Lucena City scheduled from December 5 to 9, 2022. Today is December 10, 2022, and the world commemorates International Human Rights Day.

The Sablayan Municipal Police Station (SMPS) report further reads, “Rape incidents happen mostly with the people who know each other at home, in the family, in the neighborhood, and friends. Most cases were within the family and perpetrated by the father, uncle, friend, neighbor, and grandfather. It occurs usually when parents are away and working long distance wherein their children are left under the care of relatives or guardians.” In most cases, victims are frequently threatened with death if they disclose the incident.

The report covers the period of January to November 2022. The age of the suspect ranges from 31 to 59 being at the top of the bracket, followed by 15 to 17 and those who are 18 to 30 years old. While on the other hand, the most common age of the victim ranges from 11 to 14 years old, then 15 to 17, and 6 to 10 years of age.

COP Montillana said that there are instances that complaints were retracted in favor of the perpetrator especially when committers are husbands and common-law partners because of economic dependence. While some victims are minors who have a relationship with the perpetrators where parental guidance is deemed lacking. The PNP pegged a total of 7 reported cases for the period.

In their report, the MPS stresses that there is a need to address the root cause of poverty, which drive parents to be away from their children for work. As a mitigating measure, the MPS and the MSWDO continuously conduct an intervention in the form of awareness and education to prevent sexual assaults and violence.

Led by PEMS Melissa Fajardo Gonzales, chief officer of the Women and Children’s Desk, the MPS conducted lectures in different barangays, dialogues and information drives, and radio hopping discussing the salient points of RA 8353 (Anti Rape Law Act of 1997) and other related laws.  Lectures about the bad effects of alcohol were also conducted. They have distributed flyers about safety tips and penalties to be imposed for the violation of RA 8353 were also initiated.

Meagan Emerald C. Aguilar, Social Welfare Officer II of LGU-Sablayan believes that the present situation requires more pressing and aggressive action. Active multidisciplinary participation regarding child protection, specifically against rape is imperative. But those are not enough.

Rape has something to do with parenting and, incestuous or not, it leaves the family broken. What the victims truly need immediately is medical attention for physical trauma. That is where the Municipal Health Officer Dr. Meldie D. Soriano, MD, could come into the picture.

What they need are crisis interventionalists like trained or resident psychologists for empathetic treatment of emotional trauma. We also need staunch and fearless and incorruptible lawyers and paralegals that will seek justice against their attacker. These are the two mechanisms that we need to establish here in our municipality in the future.

Today, rape is already a public offense. It is no longer a private crime. We must teach people that anyone who knows about the crime may be lobbed on the victim’s behalf. On our IECs, we must emphasize that even if the victim drops the case or pardons the attacker or the suspect, the prosecution continues and it cannot be stopped. Rape violates a person’s well-being and not just one’s virginity or purity. Anyone can be a rape victim, but the incidence of rape is more common and rampant in women and girls.

Rape is committed by a man who shall have sexual intercourse with any woman through force, threat, or intimidation when the victim is deprived of reason or is unconscious, employing fraudulent machination or grave abuse of authority, and when the victim is under 12 years old or is demented (old aged), even these circumstances are not present. By any person who, under any of the above circumstances, commits an act of sexual assault by inserting his penis into another person’s mouth or anal orifice, or any instrument or object, into the genital or oral orifice of another person.

Therefore, any man or woman may be held liable for rape. A man may rape his wife, an act deemed as “marital rape.” The penalty for rape in general may apply to the offender who commits marital rape. Rape is punishable by Reclusion Perpetua (Imprisonment from 20 to 40 years) imposed on the offender if rape is committed through sexual intercourse, Prision Mayor (Imprisonment from 6 to 12 years) is imposed on the offender if rape was committed through oral or anal sex or through the use of any object or instrument that was inserted into the mouth or anal orifice of the woman or a man. This may also be elevated to Reclusion Temporal (Imprisonment from 12 to 20 years) or Reclusion Perpetua depending on the circumstances surrounding the crime.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Ms. Dubravka Šimonović, in her thematic report to the UN Human Rights Council in June 2021, emphasized that rape is grave and systematic human rights violation and gender-based violence against women.

The proliferation of rape can be rooted in the Culture of Silence that chained us to this hellish social phenomenon. The fact that those who know the crime other than the victims preferred to shut their mouths in fear and shame, we will forever be drowned in this situation. We are afraid to be involved as we are fearful to "tarnish" the reputation of the municipality and the family of victims as well as offenders.

Sablayan’s Gender and Development (GAD) thrusts must also be directed to its multiplying rape cases. A lot of cultural factors contribute to such a social predicament but we cannot stop with our arms akimbo. We cannot lose focus and enthusiasm to combat it. We should not settle only on the financial and budgeting; project, program, and activities; and training aspects of GAD. We must tap the help of our moral guardians in religious organizations, academe, humanitarian associations, civil society organizations, or civic groups and even the nationalist women's alliances. This situation cannot be remedied by prayers alone. Our faith must be coupled with legal non-violent activism. We need a community-based, loud, massive, thorough, and sustained advocacy campaign about GAD issues.

Unless the witnesses and those who know a rape case remain in silence in cowardice, we will remain in this shitpit. As GAD, women, and human rights advocates, by simply being vocal at an individual level we can call to friends’ and acquaintances’ attention on this issue.

While most victims and witnesses adopt the culture of silence in rape cases and suffer without uttering a word or lifting a finger about it, this local government cannot afford to do the same.

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Photo: Social Issues Breath