FEW Filipinos realize that sexting—sending pornographic images of themselves or others by cell phone—was already common place among Filipinos as early as 2005. Seven years ago, Republic Act 9262, the “Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004” was enacted. That law came into being because lawmakers and then President Gloria Arroyo, as well as NGOs, social workers and law enforcement authorities, saw the need to protect the family and its members particularly women and children, from violence and threats to their personal safety and security. This law punishes not just physical violence against women and children but also harassment and causing emotional and psychological distress. Less than a year after RA 9262 was enacted, a legal case proved the popularity of sexting here. Here is our columnist Atty. Brigido Dulay’s narration of what happened: “RA 9262 was put to a test in a court case [Ang v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 182835] involving a jilted boyfriend who sexted to his former girlfriend a digitally altered picture of a naked woman whose legs were spread open but bearing his former girlfriend’s face and head, coupled with a threat that he would make and spread similarly scandalous pictures of her in the Internet. On appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the ex-boyfriend’s conviction by the lower courts for violating” RA 9262. “The Supreme Court said that the law ‘punishes any act or series of acts that constitutes violence against women. This means that a single act of harassment, which translates into violence, would be enough. The object of the law is to protect women and children. Punishing only violence that is repeatedly committed would license isolated ones.” “Hence, the ex-boyfriend’s single act of sexting an obscene – although digitally manipulated – picture to his former girlfriend depicting her in a pornographic pose, already constituted harassment amounting to psychological violence punishable under RA 9262. “In his defense, the ex-boyfriend argued that today’s youth are so used to obscene communications that his former girlfriend could not possibly be alarmed or psychologically distressed with the picture he sexted. Not so, said the Supreme Court.” Peer pressure forces teens to sext AFP reports that a new Australian study has found that “Teenagers are under pressure to send nude photos of themselves and other sexual images from their mobile phones as sexting becomes more widespread. “Melbourne University researcher Shelley Walker said her study showed that young people felt they needed to ‘sext’ to fit in because it had become a ‘behavior’ that has become more normalized in their world.” Walker told AFP that young females spoke of “a pressure that girls experience from boyfriends mainly but also from boys they don’t necessarily know . . . Then there’s the pressure that young men talked about —the pressure to be sending images out, to have the images on their phone. A couple of guys talked about being called ‘gay’ (for not having images on their phones).” “Walker, who discussed her preliminary findings at the Australasian Sexual Health Conference in Canberra, said sexting typically occurred when a boy asked his girlfriend for a nude photo of herself.” But sexting, she said, also included “a range of behavior including a boy sending a girlfriend an image of his ***** and videos of sexual acts.” These young people discussed their friends holding onto these images for blackmail or posting them on social networking site Facebook or publishing them on publicly viewed websites. The 15 to 20-year-olds Walker interviewed for her research “felt a highly sexualized media culture [that] was bombarding them with sexual images, creating a pressure to engage in sexting.” Source:- http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/opinion/110-editorials/8600-sexting-and-human-dignity
