The Supreme Court upheld a woman's conviction for statutory acts of lasciviousness against her 11-year-old nephew, issuing a sentence of up to 16 years and five months.
The High Court noted the act would be rape if genders were reversed, exposing a legal flaw in the 2018 Revised Penal Code's gendered definition of rape.
Justices lowered the minimum prison term to nine years, increased civil indemnity to P150,000, and called for reexamining historical distinctions in rape laws to protect male victims.
A WOMAN who sexually abused her 11-year-old nephew in 2018 was sentenced to up to 16 years and five months in prison, but not for rape. The Supreme Court (SC) says the reason exposes a flaw in how Philippine law treats male victims.
In a Feb. 4 decision, the Court en banc upheld her conviction for statutory acts of lasciviousness. Had the genders been reversed, it said, the act would have been rape.
“Sexual violence devastates equally, regardless of gender,” read the unanimous decision of the SC, which was written by Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen.
The woman asked the SC to overturn the Court of Appeals’ (CA) Aug. 30, 2024 decision affirming her conviction and its April 29, 2025 resolution denying her motion for reconsideration.
The parties’ names were withheld to protect the child’s identity.
What happened
The boy was visiting his father’s relatives when his aunt, then 25, had sexual intercourse with him in her room. He testified that she warned him to keep quiet or she would claim he had raped her.
He disclosed the abuse in February 2019 and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The aunt denied the charge. Her brother, the boy’s father, said the case was filed to take away his custody of the boy. A trial court and the CA convicted her of acts of lasciviousness under Republic Act (RA) 7610, the child protection law.
Why the act was not rape
The SC noted that Article 266-A of the Revised Penal Code, as worded in 2018, allowed rape through carnal knowledge to be committed only by a man against a woman.
Thus, the High Court said, “there is a void where the penalized act is committed by a woman who, without consent,” puts a man’s genitals into her organ.
Carnal knowledge and lack of consent were both present in the incident, it added, but “the gendered language of the law automatically excludes the crime committed within the ambit of rape.”
“If the genders were swapped, what happened would have been considered rape,” the SC said.
The gap affects punishment as statutory rape carries reclusion perpetua.
2022 amendment and its limits
RA 11648, signed into law in March 2022, raised the age of consent from 12 to 16. It also rewrote the law so that rape may be committed “by a person who shall have carnal knowledge of another person.”
The SC said this wording “theoretically allows for the commission of rape even by women.” But it noted that jurisprudence still defines carnal knowledge as penetration of the female organ by the male organ, even in rulings issued after the amendment.
Because the abuse happened in 2018, the amendment did not apply. The High Court did not decide whether a woman may now be convicted of rape through sexual intercourse.
SC’s argument
The Court traced the man-on-woman definition to “the patriarchal roots of rape laws,” which it said were first meant to punish men who took women regarded as the property of their husbands and fathers.
“These views on rape are not only misogynistic, they also disenfranchise male victims who have less redress in law, but are inflicted with the same trauma,” the decision said. Failing to recognize males as victims, it added, also makes it harder for them to realize they have been violated.
Quoting Leonen’s separate opinion in Garcia v. Drilon, the SC said social expectations of masculinity “urge men to keep quiet about being a victim.” When laws are not gender-neutral, male victims suffer twice: once at the hands of their abuser and second through the judicial system.
Rape as an issue of power
The SC said that rape is “an issue of power,” describing it as one person’s dominance used to violate another’s bodily autonomy. Here, it found that the aunt used her age and moral ascendancy to coerce the boy.
“This power imbalance can manifest in many ways such as through differences in gender, age, socioeconomic stature, professional authority, or education. In rape, the perpetrator uses this power imbalance to coerce or manipulate the victim into submitting to their will or to make it impossible for the victim to refuse their advances,” it said.
Citing gender-neutral laws in Michigan, Canada, Australia and Finland, the High Court called for the law to recognize that sexual violence “devastates equally regardless of how it was committed.” At the very least, it said, the historical reasons for the distinctions in rape laws should be reexamined for whether they remain relevant and fair. Quoting its 2014 ruling in People v. Quintos, it added that “rape, in whatever manner, is a desecration of a person’s will and body.”
How the offense was reclassified
Citing Gramatica v. People, an August 2025 en banc ruling, the SC said RA 7610 applies only when a child gives a flawed semblance of consent because of an adult’s coercion or influence. At 11, below the age of consent then set at 12, the boy could not consent at all.
That placed the case under Article 336 of the Revised Penal Code. The penalty, however, still follows RA 7610’s rule for victims under 12.
The High Court rejected the aunt’s claim that the boy’s behavior showed consent, saying she “gaslit him into thinking that he consented to and enjoyed what was done to him.” Victims, it said, “should not be burdened to resist or to have a standard reaction.”
Sentence
The SC kept the CA’s maximum term of 16 years, five months and nine days but lowered the minimum to nine years, four months and one day, from 12 years and one day. It raised civil indemnity to P150,000 from P50,000 and kept moral and exemplary damages at P50,000 each.
What the decision settles and what it leaves open
The binding parts of the ruling concern the reclassification and the sentence. The passage on male victims does not change the definition of rape, but as a unanimous en banc statement, it can be cited in future cases and in debates over the law. / KAL