DAVAO CITY—Underaged mothers are delivering children sired by men above 60 years old, a child-rights network said, citing Philippine birth records, which may hide likely cases of child abuse and incest.
The Child Rights Network (CRN) and the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD) did not cite exact figures, but said child birth records kept by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said “under-aged mothers are generally sired by older men, with childbirth registration records in 2018 showing that children as young as 10 years old were sired by older men aged more than 60 years.”
The trend emerged as the groups also lifted latest figures from the PSA showing “a grim scenario” that should prompt Congress to press a “legislative alarm” to pass important bills protecting children.
Young as they are
The PSA has listed 62,510 children giving birth in 2019, with about seven girls aged 10 to 14 years old giving birth each day, with a total of 2,411 births that year.
“These figures should sound the legislative alarms and press Congress to swiftly address the roots of why children are having children, including the sexual abuse dimension,” CRN said.
It said “immediate action” is needed, “as we fear that we are currently in a worse situation, as the Covid-19 pandemic has certainly compounded the issue.”
‘Family affair’
LAST year, CRN said families should keep watch on relatives, or even family members, to protect children as it cited significant information pointing at child abuse happening inside the children’s homes but paid by online foreign child predators.
What’s alarming, it said, was that cases of online sexual abuse and exploitation jumped threefold during the lockdown period in the Philippines.
The group said one incident on May 21 last year had a 28-year-old suspect of online sex trafficking arrested in Butuan City. Police said the suspect was a close relative and a neighbor of the seven victims and six other children suspected to have also been abused.
“The suspect was arrested after she was found to be offering a paying foreign sexual predator a livestream of the sexual abuse and exploitation of the minors together with an adult,” the group added.
“The sad reality that the suspect is a close relative and acquaintance of the victims highlights the fact that at least 25 percent of online cases of sexual abuse in the country are perpetrated by family members and close contacts of victims,” said Romeo Dongeto, convener of the CRN.
He said the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (Iacat), which is headed by the Department of Justice (DOJ), confirmed the data.
National emergency
CRN said the Senate and House of Representatives should “swiftly pass” three proposed bills “that can comprehensively address the sexual abuse aspect of the growing problem of the adolescent or teenage pregnancy.”
It said even the Commission on Population (PopCom) has said the rising incidents of teenage pregnancy in the country “can now be considered a national emergency.” The PopCom based its claim on the Social Weather Stations poll on Women Concerns and Family Planning, “which revealed that nearly 60 percent of Filipinos think that teenage pregnancy is the most important problem of Filipino women.”
CRN said Congress has three bills that may help alleviate the situation: the Anti-Child Rape Bill, the Prohibition of Child Marriage Bill, and the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Bill.
It said the House of Representatives approved on third and final reading on December 1 last year House Bill 7836, which provides for stronger protection against rape, sexual exploitation and abuse, and increasing the age for determining the commission of statutory rape from below 12 to below 16 years.
The bill contains “potent provisions, which include increasing the age to determine statutory rape from below 12 to below 16, equalizing the protection for victims of rape, whether a boy or a girl, and the removal of marriage as forgiveness exemption where the perpetrator is freed of legal responsibility if the perpetrator marries the person he raped.”
What is left for HB 7836 to be passed into law is for the Senate to approve a counterpart bill.
The Senate also passed on third and final reading Senate Bill 1373, or the Prohibition of Child Marriage Bill, which aims to provide equal protection for all children by declaring the facilitation of child marriage as illegal and punishable by law nationwide, it said. The bill introduced socioeconomic and culture-sensitive programs that create an enabling environment that could help foster protection for girls against child marriage.
At the House of Representatives, counterpart bills—including House Bill 1486 filed by Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy and Rep. Edcel Lagman; House Bill 3899 filed by Rep. Alfred Vargas; House Bill 5670 filed by Rep. Veronique Lacson-Noel and House Bill 7922 filed by Rep. Joy Tambunting—have all remained pending with the House Committee on Welfare of Children since 2019.
Senate Bill 1334, meanwhile, or the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Bill, authored by Sen. Risa Hontiveros, is still pending before the Senate plenary. The bill seeks to develop a national program of action and investment plan for the prevention of teenage pregnancy, the organization and mobilization of regional and local information service delivery network for adolescent health and development, the development and promotion of age- and development-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education, the establishment of functional local teen centers for adolescent health and development, and social protection for teenage mothers or parents.
“We call on Congress to make these three bills part of the legislative priority list and ensure that soon, the tides will turn, with the end view of seeing an immediate future where Filipino children are not having children,” CRN said.
Work double time!
“THE whole civil society and the government must work double-time not only to expand the mantle of protection to Filipino children but also to tear legal barriers to the access of minors to sexual and reproductive health services,” CRN and PLCPD said.
The increase in teen pregnancies could lead to the creation of 133,265 families led by minors by the end of the year, PopCom had earlier warned.
In a briefing on Wednesday, Population and Development Undersecretary Juan Antonio Perez III said this is equivalent to a population of 260,000 people, which is the average population of 10 municipalities in the Philippines combined.
Perez said births from teen pregnancies have been increasing and may reach 62,510 by the end of 2021. He said this is a conservative estimate and that the continuation of the lockdown may bring this up to around 74,000 births this year.
With minors already starting families even before they finish school, Perez said, this would reduce their ability to earn more.
Perez said the discounted lifetime wage earnings foregone by a cohort of teenage women 18 to 19 years resulting from early childbearing is estimated on the average at P33 billion.
Further, this will place parents with an additional financial burden since they will have to be the ones to support their child and their children’s child or children.
In the end, a vicious cycle is perpetrated, victimizing all generations—but the children most especially.
Image credits: DESY PISTONAMI | DREAMSTIME.COM