Rose Alvarez was 13 years old when she began having sex with a man twice her size, a relationship that would be considered sexual abuse of a minor in most countries, but not in the Philippines. Although this will change soon.
From a legal point of view, any adult can have sex with boys or girls from the age of 12, one of the youngest in the world.
Child protection organizations have been fighting for decades to increase the adult sexual age recorded in the 1930 penal code.
But the deep-rooted macho and patriarchal culture has fiercely resisted changes in the archipelago where abortion and divorce remain illegal.
However, things should change, as the Senate plans to pass a law in the coming months to increase the sexual age to adulthood to 16 and to impose life sentences.
This text will help protect young people in the archipelago, which has become a paradise for online pedophiles and where 500 teenage pregnancies occur daily.
– “She was a girl” –
“It’s the victory of Filipino children,” said Patrizia Benvenuti, head of Unicef’s child protection division in the Philippines.
“Establishing a sexual majority at the age of 12 is a contradiction with scientific studies on brain development,” he says.
Rose Alvarez became pregnant at the age of 14. Today she knows she was too young to have sex and take on the demands of motherhood.
“She was a girl, she didn’t know anything about sex,” the 16-year-old told a AFP clinic run by the Likhaan Center for Maternal Health in Navotas, one of Manila’s poorest neighborhoods.
“I told him to put on the condom, but he took it off. He didn’t want to use it,” says the young woman, who does not want to reveal her real name.
Rose, who until the age of 12 thought she could get pregnant with a simple kiss, says she drank a lot the first time she slept with this 29-year-old man she found on Facebook.
“I was too drunk to know what I was doing,” she says. “I woke up shocked when I discovered blood on my underwear. It hurt a lot.”
– Guilty victims –
There is an hourly violation in the Philippines, Senator Risa Hontiveros said in a Senate document. Seven out of 10 victims are minors, and the vast majority are girls.
A 2015 national survey found that 20% of 13-17 year olds were victims of sexual abuse and 4% were raped, according to Unicef.
Legal proceedings in cases involving people over the age of 12 are complicated because the excuse for consent is often invoked, says Rowena Legaspi, director general of the NGO Center for the Rights and Legal Development of Children.
“Imagine a 12-year-old girl. She’s a minor,” he told AFP. “How could I have accepted?”
Raising the age of sexual majority should also make life difficult for sexual predators, according to associations that support more information for young people.
The sexist mentality of many magistrates who tend to blame the victims must also be changed, according to Legaspi, who recalls that there is no rush to hold rape hearings.
– Perverse effects –
Others are worried about the perverse effects of increasing the age of sexual majority, because they fear that it hides a problem that will continue to exist and will complicate the care of young women in difficulty.
Donna Valdez, 15, says couples should be able to decide if they are ready to have sex. She was 13 years old when she found her boyfriend who is ten years older on Facebook.
After two months of online exchanges, they slept and she quickly became pregnant.
Now they live together and, according to the new law, her boyfriend could be accused of child abuse.
Donna Valdez says she has no regrets about becoming such a young mother.
“We are happy to have been blessed with the arrival of a son,” she explains, as her 10-month-old baby shakes her knees.
However, he admits that he misses his old life a little: “Sometimes I would like to go out with my friends and have fun.”