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Critique of criminal justice systems that focus on penalizing perpetrators;

Advocacy of giving substantial/equal attention to the rehabilitation and restitution for the victims

Development of holistic and effective crime prevention systems.

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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System Not Helping Rape Victims*

By Teresita G. Camacho

Editorial Assistant, Philippine Human Rights Forum

[This is excerpted from an article written by Ms. Teresita G. Camacho for the Philippine Human Rights Forum, a semestral journal published by the Philippine Human Rights Information Center. Taken from the HRF issue of January-June 1999 (Vol. VIII, No. 2) this excerpt is re-titled for clearer relevance to the empowering paradigm on reconstructive or reformative justice.]

NOW that the Anti-Rape Law has been revised, there are those who say that any woman or child can easily file a case of rape against her husband or against her father out of vindictiveness or for money.

But lawyer Evalyn Ursua, executive director of the Women’s Legal Bureau (WLB), clarifies: “The revised law did not make the process easier. It simply changed the elements of the crime. Rape now is not confined to just penile penetration of the vagina. The law recognizes that there are other forms of rape.

In that sense, the law has made prosecution different because the requirements of evidence need not be to prove that the penis was used to rape; other instruments may have been used instead. But the law did not change the structures of the criminal justice system, which defines whether the process is sensitive, or whether the story is believable or not. The process remains the same.”

Convictions of rape are usually won in cases of statutory rape where the girl is below the age of 12 years. A WLB study of the Supreme Court convictions for rape from 1961 to early 1992 showed that the accused in a case of statutory rape had a 98 percent chance of getting a conviction. A single woman who had no prior sexual experience had a 94 percent chance of having. Her case successfully prosecuted, while married women had 81 percent chance of winning their respective cases.

Unmarried women who have had prior sexual experiences stand only a 32-percent chance seeing their abusers jailed. Though the WLB has done no study since the Anti-Rape Law took effect. Ursua says the trend to convictions is generally the same. After all, the mind-set of people in general, and of judges in particular, has not drastically changed such that the concept of gender-based violence is now fully understood.

The dictum that one is believed innocent until proven to be other wise is stretched to its illogical extreme in rape where the victim must prove beyond reasonable doubt that she did not want to be raped or that she did not “deserve” to be sexually assaulted.

To women who have been raped, going to court is like being raped all over again. At every stage, from the police investigation to the medico-legal examination to the fiscal’s office and then to the court, the victim must present the evidence of abuse – her body, her private parts, her history, herself. She is tested, scrutinized, analyzed.
Ursua says, “It is very, very difficult to file a case of gender-based violence. The victim goes through an insensitive and unfacilitative process, a traumatic process.

In 1994, the Philippine National Police, the Philippine National Police estimated that rape happens every six hours. Arugaan, a nongovernmental organization for women, estimates that sexual abuse occurs at an average of 40 new cases every month. Alarming as these figures are, they tell us only the reported cases. Many women and girls keep their dark secret deep in the recesses of their minds, to surface later in some cases and told in confidence to friends.

Clearly, rape is a heinous crime and punishment for it is now death by lethal injection. But in January of 1999, 27 women’s organizations and institutions met and signed a position paper against the reimposition of the death penalty. Among other points, the paper said: “We believe that Leo Echegaray is guilty…Our reasons for opposing the death penalty are fundamentally different from those who have already made themselves heard… The death penalty will not arrest these violations. Rather, it will perpetuate the culture of violence.”

Rape is a product of a system of values, mores and attitudes that allow and enhance men’s supremacy over women and children. Rape is a misuse of power over the less empowered. How can the death penalty change a system, a mind-set, a deep cultural conditioning? To curb and arrest the problem of rape, we want to look at the judicial system, the penology system, even our selves.”

As Raquel Edralin-Tiglao, executive director of the Women’s Crisis Center, says, “There must be an appreciation of the significance of the (judges’) critical role in addressing the problem of violence against women. Every judge delivers a message to society through the decisions he/she makes by either affirming or chipping away at myths about women. I am not denying there have there have been changes and improvements and there are judges who are now more sensitive and understand gender-based violence. But these are individual efforts.”

By focusing on the death penalty, Ursua adds, government in effect “refuses to attack the real problem, making us believe something is being done to stop, if not curb, the violence.”

Aida Santos, a feminist who is part of a task force on social science and reproductive health, says, “Even when we were working for the revision of the Anti-Rape Law, we did not want the death penalty for rapists. Nothing good can come out of a vengeful punishment. How can you straighten out somebody after you kill him?” She suggests other means of punishment and rehabilitation. “More creative and life-enhancing measures, instead of a life-destroying program which is full of vengeance?

We want to integrate them back into society. How can that be done when criminality has seeped into their bones. Teach them to pay for their crime and let them give something positive to society.

As women and women’s organizations and institutions campaign against the death penalty for rapists, they continue to help the victims.

Their joint statement says, “We remain committed to our work against violence against women and children – we know that when this issue dies down and the limelight shifts away from the personalities, we will be left once more to deal with the needs of women and children who are victims of violence.”

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