Psychological violence

This Women’s Month, the Supreme Court came out with a landmark ruling that is useful to bear in mind: marital infidelity can constitute psychological violence, which is a criminal offense.

Specifically, it violates Section 5(i) of Republic Act 9262, the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act. RA 9262 is supposed to plug deficiencies in the Revised Penal Code that classifies unfaithfulness of a husband as well as concubinage as criminal offenses.

Women surely welcome the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the conviction of a man who was sued by his wife after she found out he had started an affair with another woman and gotten the mistress pregnant after the wife went to Singapore to work.

In his appeal, the man said he took care of his daughter with his wife from infancy until his wife returned from overseas after learning of his affair. But the daughter, at age nine, tearfully testified in court that she suffered emotional anguish while living with her father and his mistress.

The SC threw out the petition to reverse the man’s conviction by a regional trial court and affirmed by the Court of Appeals, for inflicting psychological violence through emotional and psychological abandonment.

There is some debate on how this will impact romantic relationships, where there is no guarantee of living happily ever after, till death do you part.

The SC ruling specifically tackles marital infidelity, and not live-in and long-term dating arrangements among unmarried couples, which are covered by the law against domestic violence. But if an actionable case comes up, will the SC ruling apply to all the relationships covered by RA 9262?

People are also wondering if the ruling will further sour the younger generations from marriage.

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Recent reports said marriage rates are hitting record lows in South Korea and Japan, although it’s not because of concern about becoming a convicted felon for marital infidelity. Among the reported reasons is the preference of women in advanced economies to focus on their career rather than family.

Raising even one child can set back a woman’s career prospects in societies where there are no house helpers or relatives (mostly retired seniors) who can babysit while mom is at work. Even when a couple in such societies can afford a nanny, the woman typically will want no more than two children, for easier balancing with the demands of career development.

This is also among the reasons why marriages and childbirths are falling even in China, where the one-child policy has been eased.

In our country, the availability of domestic helpers and stay-at-home lolos and lolas doting on grandchildren enables women to juggle career and child rearing. Still, in November last year, the Philippine Statistics Authority recorded the sharpest ever decline in the birthrate – at just 1.9 per woman – among Filipino mothers aged 15 to 49.

Pre-pandemic, authorities also reported declining marriages in the country, although the numbers rose last year from the COVID lockdown lows in 2020 and 2021.

There are numerous factors that have been cited for the decline, including the cost of weddings and, yes, the reluctance of women who want to prioritize their careers over marriage.

With the SC ruling on marital infidelity constituting psychological violence, even the men may now think twice before jumping into marriage. The convict was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay P100,000 in damages for the emotional anguish caused by his infidelity.

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Apart from women wanting to focus on their careers, the difficulty of getting out of a bad marriage has to be another reason for the downtrend in weddings.

The Philippines is now the only country in the world where divorce is banned – unless you count the Vatican city-state, which sits in Italy where divorce is also legal.

Opponents of divorce stress that this situation should be a source of pride rather than dismay for predominantly Catholic Philippines.

Since the first Aquino administration, there have been efforts – pushed mainly by women – to legalize divorce. Religious opposition always stymied the initiatives. Women’s groups also suspected that many male lawmakers – the dominant gender in Congress – were chronic womanizers who didn’t want to have to pay alimony in case their wives divorced them.

Also on Women’s Month, the House of Representatives committee on population and family relations voted 12-0 for the latest version of a divorce bill. Whether the bill will actually hurdle the 19th Congress is another story.

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When RA 9262 was enacted in 2004, I wondered if male lawmakers were all truly progressive men committed to promoting women’s welfare. Were they unabashed mama’s boys and loving husbands whose formula for a happy, peaceful life is to always say yes to women? Were they merely sleeping on the job? Or were they confident in the thought that the law wouldn’t be enforced anyway?

If all Filipino women brought their philandering husbands to court, our jails could overflow again, this time with unfaithful men.

That could be a substantial percentage of Filipino men. And they wouldn’t be just hampaslupa offenders from the slums, like the penny-ante drug pushers rounded up under Oplan Tokhang, but men across all income levels.

Some of the most notorious womanizers in this country are also among the wealthiest – the more money, the more women and families outside marriage. One, a billionaire, could one day face a scandal if ever a #MeToo movement gains ground in the country.

Rodrigo Duterte, like Joseph Estrada an unapologetic womanizer, liked to tell the men in the audience during public gatherings that all of them, bar none, should admit that they had at one time or another cheated on their women.

Guys, read the law. If your wife or partner files a complaint against you for domestic violence, even before guilt is established, the woman gets the kids, the house and the car. If you as much as peek into the house window because you miss the family or your fur baby, you could be slapped with another complaint for psychological violence.

In our land where men readily describe themselves as ander di saya or henpecked, there are also many abusive and violent misogynists with a twisted sense of machismo, including men occupying high positions in government.

Being a woman, I’m not complaining about RA 9262, a tough law against a wide range of situations involving physical, sexual and psychological violence against women and children. It can in fact use better enforcement, especially at the barangay level.

But I have male relatives and friends, who might brush aside RA 9262 as just another law that doesn’t get enforced. Don’t say you weren’t warned.