Senator Imee Marcos has proposed to extend the prescriptive period (legal deadlines) for filing cases of rape and other forms of violence against women and children (VAWC).

Those who commit major VAWC offenses should be held accountable for the rest of their lives if they are either a parent, step-parent, ascendant, guardian, or relative within the fourth degree of consanguinity or affinity, she said.

The time limit to sue major VAWC offenders should also be “imprescriptible” when persons of authority, influence, or moral ascendancy in work, training, or education environments are involved, Marcos added.

Present laws state prescriptive periods of 10 to 20 years for various degrees of VAWC offenses and their corresponding penalties.

But Marcos has filed Senate Bill (SB) 1535 to amend their context in Section 24 of Republic Act 9262, known as the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004, and in Article 90 of the Revised Penal Code.

“Despite the country’s unwavering efforts to develop effective legislation, inequities in power – economic, social, financial – persist,” Marcos emphasized.

“Victims should be given more time to come out publicly. The personal trauma and the social stigma attached to reporting VAWC offenses cannot be underestimated,“ she added.

According to Marcos’s SB 1535, major VAWC offenses that should be made imprescriptible when a victim’s next of kin, custodians, or a person in authority is involved include attempted or consummated rape, causing or attempting to cause a woman or child to engage in sexual activity not constituting rape, causing or threatening to cause physical harm, depriving or threatening to deprive a mother of custody of her child or of ample financial support for her child, and denying a woman her right to work or controlling her money or personal and conjugal property.

Marcos’s bill also extends the prescriptive period from 10 to 20 years when the same offenders commit lighter VAWC crimes like stalking, peering, entering a dwelling against a woman’s will, destroying her property, verbal and emotional abuse, and public ridicule of a woman or child.

The senator’s call to amend the prescriptive periods on VAWC crimes coincides with this year’s global campaign to end violence against women, which continues until December 10.

The Philippines has extended its national campaign until December 12, which marks the historic signing in 2000 of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons.