AAA v BBB, GR No. 212448, [2018] Case Digest

 

AAA v BBB,

GR No. 212448, 2018

Facts:

            Petitioner AAA and BBB were married; their union produced two children. BBB started working in Singapore as a chef, where he acquired permanent resident status. AAA and their children moved back to her parents' house in Pasig City.

            AAA claimed, albeit not reflected in the Information, that BBB sent little to no financial support, and only sporadically. There were also allegations of virtual abandonment, mistreatment of her and their son CCC, and physical and sexual violence. To make matters worse, BBB supposedly started having an affair with a Singaporean woman with whom he allegedly has been living in Singapore. Things came to a head on April 19, 2011 when AAA and BBB had a violent altercation at a hotel room in Singapore during her visit with their kids. As can be gathered from the earlier cited Information, despite the claims of varied forms of abuses, the investigating prosecutor found sufficient basis to charge BBB with causing AAA mental and emotional anguish through his alleged marital infidelity.

            The Information having been filed, a warrant of arrest was issued against BBB. The counsel of BBB file a motion to quash the information on the ground of lack of jurisdiction. Trial court grant the motion to quash and dismiss the case. 

            AAA sought direct recourse to this Court via the instant petition on a pure question of law. AAA posits that R.A. No. 9262 is in danger of becoming transmogrified into a weak, wobbly, and worthless law because with the court a quo's ruling, it is as if husbands of Filipino women have been given license to enter into extra-marital affairs without fear of any consequence, as long as they are carried out abroad.

 

Issue:

            Whether or not the Philippine Court has jurisdiction over the case.

 

Held:

            YES. "Physical violence is only the most visible form of abuse. Psychological abuse, particularly forced social and economic isolation of women, is also common." As jurisdiction of a court over the criminal case is determined by the allegations in the complaint or information, threshing out the essential elements of psychological abuse under R.A. No. 9262 is crucial.  It bears emphasis that Section 5(i) penalizes some forms of psychological violence that are inflicted on victims who are women and children. Other forms of psychological violence, as well as physical, sexual and economic violence, are addressed and penalized in other subparts of Section 5.

            Contrary to the interpretation of the RTC, what R.A. No. 9262 criminalizes is not the marital infidelity per se but the psychological violence causing mental or emotional suffering on the wife. Otherwise stated, it is the violence inflicted under the said circumstances that the law seeks to outlaw. Marital infidelity as cited in the law is only one of the various acts by which psychological violence may be committed. Moreover, depending on the circumstances of the spouses and for a myriad of reasons, the illicit relationship may or may not even be causing mental or emotional anguish on the wife. Thus, the mental or emotional suffering of the victim is an essential and distinct element in the commission of the offense.

 

 

 

 

èThe grant of BBB's motion to quash may not therefore be viewed as an acquittal, which in limited instances may only be repudiated by a petition for certiorari under Rule 65 upon showing grave abuse of discretion lest the accused would be twice placed in jeopardy.

 

What may be gleaned from Section 7 of R.A. No. 9262 is that the law contemplates that acts of violence against women and their children may manifest as transitory or continuing crimes; meaning that some acts material and essential thereto and requisite in their consummation occur in one municipality or territory, while some occur in another. In such cases, the court wherein any of the crime's essential and material acts have been committed maintains jurisdiction to try the case; it being understood that the first court taking cognizance of the same excludes the other. Thus, a person charged with a continuing or transitory crime may be validly tried in any municipality or territory where the offense was in part committed.

It is necessary, for Philippine courts to have jurisdiction when the abusive conduct or act of violence under Section 5(i) of R.A. No. 9262 in relation to Section 3(a), Paragraph (C) was committed outside Philippine territory, that the victim be a resident of the place where the complaint is filed in view of the anguish suffered being a material element of the offense. In the present scenario, the offended wife and children of respondent husband are residents of Pasig City since March of 2010. Hence, the RTC of Pasig City may exercise jurisdiction over the case.