Violence by husbands, male partners in Iloilo 'alarming'?

Nov. 11, 2016

Meeting

Iloilo Provincial Committee on VAWC (violence against women and their children)

The second semester of last year (July - December 2015), the Iloilo Police Provincial Office (IPPO) reported 452 cases of physical assaults, 18 instances of “economic abuse” (deprivation of financial support), 124 incidents of “psychological abuses” (threats, verbal shaming) in Iloilo’s 42 towns and one component city (Passi).

In the same period, 45 were sexually assaulted, 18 of whom raped.

INSP. MONEVA

All victims are women or their children and the perpetrators are husbands, live-in partners or males with whom the women victims had past dating relationship, explains Insp. Mary Grace Ceballos Moneba, chief of the women’s and children’s desk (WCD) of the IPPO.

Each PNP station in the towns or cities has its own WCD that investigates cases of abuses against women and minors and, if warranted, file criminal charges against perpetrators.

The second semester of 2015 though was an improvement over the first semester where 55 women were sexually assaulted (26 of them raped).

From January to June 2015, the IPPO culled 652 incidents of physical, financial and psychological violence against women and their children. One woman, in Pavia, Iloilo, though succumbed to physical violence by her partner. The report merely lumped together all types of violence (except sexual) inflicted on women and their children, unlike the one for the second semester which categorized the incidents as physical, economic and psychological abuses.

Republic Act  9262, enacted on March 8, 2004, mandates the formation of committees all local government units (LGUs) from barangays up, on VAWC to monitor and prevent abuses on women and their children in the hands of their present or past partners. For one, the law grants the punong barangay or, in its absence, members of the barangay legislature, quasi-judicial power of issuing “barangay protection order” (BPO) to prevent the violence by ordering the errant male to stay away from the woman, for at least 15 days.

Insp. Moneba though prefers to view the figures she reported rather in the positive, that is, “as outcome of our education and advocacy, where victims and their neighbors are empowered to come out in the open instead of keeping silent.