ILOILO City – Ninety-eight cases of violence against women and children (VAWC) were record in March which was ironically the National Women’s Month.
Data from the Women’s and Children’s Protection Desk (WCPD) of the Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) covering the period from March 1 to 31 showed the following distribution of VAWC cases in Western Visayas:
* Iloilo – 31
* Aklan, Bacolod City, Negros Occidental – 12 each
* Antique – 10
* Guimaras – nine
* Iloilo City – eight
* Capiz – seven
The annual National Women’s Month celebration aims to raise public awareness on continuing and emerging women’s empowerment and gender equality issues and concerns, and challenges while also highlighting women’s achievements.
What is violence against women and children?
Republic Act 9262 or the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004 defines it as “any act or a series of acts committed by any person against a woman who is his wife, former wife, or against a woman with whom the person has or had a sexual or dating relationship, or with whom he has a common child, or against her child whether legitimate or illegitimate, within or without the family abode, which result in or is likely to result in physical, sexual, psychological harm or suffering, or economic abuse including threats of such acts, battery, assault, coercion, harassment or arbitrary deprivation of liberty.”
The violence could be physical – acts that include bodily or physical harm.
It could also be sexual – acts which are sexual in nature such as rape, sexual harassment, acts of lasciviousness, treating a woman or her child as a sex object, making demeaning and sexually suggestive remarks, physically attacking the sexual parts of the victim’s body, forcing her/him to watch obscene publications and indecent shows or forcing the woman or her child to do indecent acts and/or make films thereof, forcing the wife and mistress/lover to live in the conjugal home or sleep together in the same room with the abuser.
VAWC may also be psychological – acts or omissions causing or likely to cause mental or emotional suffering of the victim such as but not limited to intimidation, harassment, stalking, damage to property, public ridicule or humiliation, repeated verbal abuse and marital infidelity. It includes causing or allowing the victim to witness the physical, sexual or psychological abuse of a member of the family to which the victim belongs, or to witness pornography in any form or to witness abusive injury to pets or to unlawful or unwanted deprivation of the right to custody and/or visitation of common children.
Economic abuse is also a form of VAWC. It refers to acts that make or attempt to make a woman financially dependent which includes, but is not limited to the following:
* withdrawal of financial support or preventing the victim from engaging in any legitimate profession, occupation, business or activity
* deprivation or threat of deprivation of financial resources and the right to the use and enjoyment of the conjugal, community or property owned in common
* destroying household property
* controlling the victims’ own money or properties or solely controlling the conjugal money or properties
From January to March, the regional WCPD recorded 355 VAWC cases.
WCPD regional chief, Police Major Mona Guia Menez, said most cases were physical harm, rape and acts of lasciviousness.
“Charges have been filed in court,” said Menez./PN
