R.A.

9208: Anti-Trafficking in
Persons Act

Cases:
Leona has been a match-maker for Filipinas looking for

European husbands. For a fee she seeks out European

partners for them. Unfortunately, some of the
husbands of her clients eventually pass them on to
their friends. Can Leona be prosecuted?
Arthur has been engaging the services of various
prostitutes for some time now, and he usually gets them
from different brothels or houses. Is there anything
indictable about Arthurs conduct?
A local partnership brings foreign tourists into the
province, but the visit includes the sexual services of
local girls. Is there a crime?

The concept of trafficking in persons:

Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,
Especially Women and Children (U.N., 2000)

Acts: Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of

persons;
Means: Threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of
abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a
position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or
benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over
another person.
Purpose: Exploitation, which includes prostitution of others, or
other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery
or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

Note that under R.A. 9208:

Phrase included: within or across national borders. No

need for a transnational act to make the offense

indictable.
Whatever the means, if it is a child recruited,
transported, transferred, harbored or received for the
purpose of exploitation: trafficking in persons.
Prostitution need not involve sexual intercourse.
Lascivious conduct in exchange for money, profit or any
other consideration sufficient.
Forced labor and slavery: includes extraction of work or
services by debt-bondage or deception.

Debt bondage:
Debt-bondage: pledging by the debtor of personal services, or those
of a person under his control when the length and nature of the
services is not clearly defined, or when the value of the services as
reasonably assessed is not applied towards the liquidation of the
debt.
Passing a housemaid off to ones creditor without any provision
as to length and nature of services.
Accepting the services of the son of a debtor without any clearly
stipulated length or services or the nature thereof.
Withholding the salaries of a domestic helper for supposed
payment of transportation and placement even after the
reasonable value thereof has been rendered.

Sexual exploitation:

Sexual exploitation:
Subjection of a person to prostitution OR
Production of pornographic material
As a result of:

Threat
Deception
Coercion
Abduction
Force
Abuse of authority or moral ascendancy
Debt bondage or deception.

Consent:

There is trafficking with or without the victims

consent or knowledge (Sec. 3,a).

Consent of the victim: immaterial.
Protocol: Art. 3,b The consent of the victim of
trafficking in persons to the intended
exploitation set forth xxx shall be irrelevant
where any means set forth xxx have been
used.
When one is requested to transport someone
abroad who is interested in immigrating, even
by working as a sex-worker, and one knows that
the person so transported will be a prostitute,
one can be charged under the law.

Prostitution:
The prostitute herself (himself): not punished under this
law;
RPC provisions penalizing prostitution: remain.

Except that: the prostitute who is a trafficked person is considered a

victim and CANNOT BE PROSECUTED for prostitution. (Section 17)

Person who engages the services of a prostitute:

Penalized under this Act

A prostitute who offers her own services and is her own
manager: not a trafficked person.
BUT: When a customer engages in the services of a
prostitute who is a trafficked person: then there is a
crime under Section 11.
Note: New penalty introduced community service.

Sec. 4: Acts of Trafficking

Recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring,

providing receiving a person by any of the means set

forth for the purposes of prostitution, pornography,
sexual exploitation, forced slavery, involuntary servitude
or debt bondage.
Is mail-order-bride matching criminalized? Not
necessarily; only when the matching for marriage is for
purposes of prostitution and other statutorily
enumerated situations.
In fact: necessary that the offender know that what
purports to be marriage results in prostitution or
exploitation. This is clear from Art. 5,1 of the Protocol.

Further acts of trafficking:

Offering or contracting marriage for the purpose of
exploitation;

Hence the purported husband who offers or contracts marriage

and later makes of his partner the victim of exploitation can be
prosecuted.

Undertaking and organizing sex tours and sex tourism

packages;
Maintaining or hiring a person to engage in prostitution
or pornography.
This is not the act of engaging the services of a prostitute.
Otherwise: incongruity, see Section 11.
Maintaining or hiring: the offense of a brother owner.

Further acts of trafficking:

Adopting or facilitating the adoption of persons for the

purpose of their exploitation.

Recruiting, hiring, adopting, transporting or abducting a
person for the purpose of removal or sale of organs.
The donation of organs: not prohibited.
But that the source of the organs may have been compensated:
not a defense against the charge of trafficking.

Recruiting, transporting or adopting a child to engage in

armed activities.

Quite surprisingly, the abduction of children for purposes of

engaging them in armed activities: not contemplated.
Probably because abduction seriously penalized in itself.

Penalty for acts of trafficking:

Imprisonment of 20 years and a fine of not less than

One Million Pesos but not more than Two Million Pesos.
Therefore: RTC jurisdiction
Confidentiality provisions applicable.
Who may prosecute: Anyone who knows of the crime.
Venue: where offense committed; or where any of the
elements occurred (example: port of disembarkation or
transshipment); or actual residence of the trafficked
person at the time of the commission of the offense;
When separate civil action instituted: no filing fees.
Came into effect: May 23, 2003
Bail: matter of right

Other important considerations:

Section 6: Qualified trafficking

Maintaining a house of prostitution or a brothel:

punished under Section 4,e

Bugaws: punished under Section 5,c.
Prescriptive period: 10 years (20 years for
syndicates) reckoned from liberation of the
trafficked person.
Conviction: when the offender is an adopter,
immediate rescission of the decree of adoption
ipso iure.