Survivor-Centered Prosecution of Online Child Sexual Exploitation in the Philippines

Edna S. Pitao-Honor

Office of the Provincial Prosecutor of Biliran, National Prosecution Service, Department of Justice, Biliran, Philippines

This article examines whether current Philippine law supports a survivor-centered model of prosecuting online child sexual exploitation. Using doctrinal legal research, document analysis, and critical review, it analyzes statutes, implementing rules, Supreme Court rules, selected jurisprudence, executive issuances, and peer-reviewed scholarship relevant to online sexual abuse or exploitation of children in the Philippines. The article makes four claims. First, Republic Act No. 11930, Republic Act No. 11862, the revised implementing rules of Republic Act No. 9208, the implementing rules of Republic Act No. 11930, Republic Act No. 10175, and the Rules on Electronic Evidence collectively shift prosecution away from overdependence on child testimony and toward a broader evidentiary ecosystem of digital, platform, rescue-generated, and financial records. Second, the Rule on Examination of a Child Witness supplies a mature procedural framework for protected participation and lawful evidentiary accommodation. Third, recent Supreme Court decisions show that survivor-centered procedure is both enabled and disciplined by safeguards on competency, unavailability, corroboration, confrontation, and statutory transition. Fourth, current coordination measures suggest that prosecutorial quality depends as much on referral pathways and aftercare as on formal criminalization. Survivor-centered prosecution, on this account, is not a retreat from accountability but a more exacting standard of criminal justice that reduces secondary victimization while preserving the child’s dignity within legal process

Article link: https://www.asianinstituteofresearch.org/lhqrarchives/survivor-centered-prosecution-of-online-child-sexual-exploitation-in-the-philippines