Let’s stop pretending that silence is safety. Because silence has only ever protected the predator. Let this be a warning, not just to the perpetrators, but to the entire network of enablers, cultural apologists, and complicit institutions that have turned abuse into something survivable rather than something punishable. Rape is a crime. Attempted rape is a crime. Child abuse is a crime.
These are not moral suggestions. These are codified realities under Philippine law. But time and time again, we see that when the abuser holds power, be it as a stepfather, a cousin, a government official, or a tribal elder, the rules bend, break, or disappear entirely.
That is, until someone speaks.
You think because she didn’t scream, you’re safe. Because she didn’t bleed, you’re innocent. Because she didn’t die, you’re free.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
Under Article 266-A of the Revised Penal Code, as amended by RA 8353, rape includes sexual assault by force or intimidation. If penetration doesn’t happen, the law doesn’t stop looking. Article 6 and Article 51 will still put you behind bars, for up to 12 years, for attempted rape.
And if the victim is a child, the punishment increases, and it should.
RA 7610 criminalizes all forms of child abuse. Just touching, grooming, or subjecting a child to lascivious acts can lock you up for two decades.
Thanks to RA 11648, the age of sexual consent is now 16. You sleep with, or attempt to sleep with, a minor, and you’re not just a criminal. You’re a predator, and the law knows it.
But here’s the problem: laws don’t scare monsters. Exposure does. I know a true story. A 12-year-old girl, orphaned, living under the roof of a brother who rapes her. Her sister offers her to a man three times her age, under the guise of “marriage.” They call it tradition. They call it culture. They call it anything but what it really is: human trafficking sanctioned by silence.
In case anyone forgot: RA 11596, the Anti-Child Marriage Law, criminalizes this practice. Anyone who arranges, officiates, or facilitates the marriage of a child will answer to the law. The penalty? Up to 12 years in prison. Because your customs do not override the Constitution.
But the truth is harsher than the statutes. These crimes happen not just in remote mountains or poor provinces. They happen in gated communities. In churches. In homes wrapped in fake piety and power.
And these predators? They count on our reluctance to speak. They count on culture to hide them. They count on a system that fears scandal more than it fears child rape.
This column isn’t just a warning to them. It’s a threat to the machinery that protects them. To every barangay official who told a mother to stay quiet. To every community leader who told a girl she was “ruining the family.” To every school that buried a report to “avoid trouble.” You are complicit.
You are the shield these predators hide behind.
Let me speak plainly: You should be more afraid of us than she is of you. Because she may have been a child when you tried to break her. But she’s growing up now. And the trauma you thought you buried is fermenting into something stronger: truth. Anger. Justice. I know. Because I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it.
We remember the hands. The looks. The rooms we were told not to enter. We remember the shame we were told to carry. The fear we were told to normalize. We were taught that survival was enough. But survival was never justice.
To the men who didn’t “finish” and think they didn’t cross the line, you did. You crossed it the moment your intentions became action. The moment you thought your desire could erase her autonomy.
She didn’t die. But you killed something in her. And that’s why the law doesn’t wait for the trauma to be “complete” before it acts.
We don’t wait for another girl to disappear. We don’t wait for another sister to stay silent. We don’t wait for the bodies to pile up before we say, “Enough.”
Because girls like me? We remember. And we don’t forget. And when we speak, we name names. We connect dots. We dismantle silence. And we don’t stop until you’re out of hiding and into handcuffs.
You may not be in the headlines, yet. But the day will come. Because justice, though delayed, has a memory. And it never forgets the ones who thought survival meant forgiveness.
