Global Judicial Integrity Network Updates Special Edition 'Views' Review | Page 15

VIEWS
and information dissemination about the evils
of sextortion, the remedies against it, and its
eradication.
In the Philippines, an additional training on
sextortion was conducted as part of a three-year
project (Stopping the Abuse of Power through
Sexual Exploitation) undertaken by the
Philippine Women Judges Association (PWJA),
in collaboration with the IAWJ and with support
from the Government of the Netherlands. The
project had a two-fold mission: the preparation
of a country report addressing sextortion in
public institutions, and the development and
implementation of a toolkit to train personnel
from those public institutions on issues of
sextortion.
During the implementation of the training
package, members of the judiciary were trained
on the statutory framework, the institutional
and budgetary frameworks, and the system
for receiving complaints and for protecting
complainants in sextortion cases. A similar
project was also implemented by the women
judges associations in Tanzania and in Bosnia
and Herzegovina.
In the implementation of their project, the
PWJA conducted multi-sectoral consultations
in several major cities and municipalities which
were attended by all the actors of the justice
system. As a result, the term ‘sextortion’ is
now widely used in the Philippines to describe
acts comprised within its definition. Recently,
through my decision in a case filed against
a lawyer, sextortion has found its way into
Philippine jurisprudence as well; the lawyer
was disbarred, after having been found guilty
of sextortion of his subordinate in a government
institution.
Raising awareness by introducing the term into
public dialogue, and by holding perpetrators
accountable, will help us on the path to ending
sextortion in the judiciary.
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