Beware of “sexting”

BEFORE Android, smart phones and tablets became all the rage in tech-savvy Manila, the camera phone was the gadget of choice of the upwardly-mobile urbanite. The demand for camera phones reached fever pitch in early 2001 with people from all walks of life owning, if not wanting one. The Filipinos’ fondness for instant “photo-ops” and irrepressible desire to keep connected with family and friends even made Nokia the leading camera phone in the Philippine market. The camera phone also gave rise to the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) which allowed people to wirelessly send pictures from their camera phones to their friends in real time.

In time, sending and sharing photographs from one’s camera phone became commonplace among cellphone users and internet denizens. This trend persists to this day among various social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. While people may have had a few good laughs at the slew of humorous and largely inoffensive “photoshopped” pictures uploaded from the Internet over the years, this trend has also spawned a more unsavory use of the camera phone—“sexting”.

A portmanteau of sex and texting, “sexting” is slang for the act of sending sexually explicit or suggestive text, pictures or video between mobile devices like camera phones using MMS. Although “sexting” often takes place between two consenting adults, it can also happen against the wishes of a person who is the subject of such text, picture or video as when “sexting” is used with less intimate intentions, such as to expose a person to ridicule or to create a scandal. Women and children in particular have become vulnerable targets of these “sexting” scandals.

In 2004, Congress passed RA 9262, popularly known as the “Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004” which aims to protect women and children against violence in whatever form. The enactment of RA 9262 was born out of “the need to protect the family and its members particularly women and children, from violence and threats to their personal safety and security.” Among the acts of violence punished by this law is engaging in any form of harassment or violence, personally or through another that alarms or causes substantial emotional or psychological distress to a woman or her child.

Barely a year after its enactment, 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 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 the “Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004.”

The Supreme Court said that the Anti-Violence Against Women 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. The picture he “sexted” was clearly an obscene picture and, to his former girlfriend, a revolting and offensive one. Any woman who is not in the pornography trade, would surely be scandalized and pained if she sees herself in such a picture. Adding insult to injury, the ex-boyfriend sent the picture with a threat to post it in the Internet for all to see, which must have given his former girlfriend a nightmare.

What are the lessons learned? While camera phones may have stimulating, creative and ingenious uses, it must be used responsibly and judiciously. So before “sexting” anyone, think twice before you press that “send” button. It can land you in jail. –ATTY. DODO DULAY, Daily Tribune