Father charged for videotaping daughter

A father from Cebu City is in legal trouble for videotaping his minor daughter using his smartphone while the latter was taking a bath.

The Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor has indicted the father for violating Republic Act (RA) 7610, or the Anti-Child Abuse Law, in relation to RA 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, after his daughter and his wife reported the incident to the police.

The father sneaked his mobile phone and placed it on top of the wall inside the toilet to record his daughter while she was taking a bath last Sept. 15, 2017.

“The fact that the perpetrator is the child’s own father casts no doubt to the fact that the abuse is indeed prejudicial to the development of the complainant as a child,” said Prosecutor Misty Leah Escolar-Hupp in her resolution.

In her complaint-affidavit, the 17-year-old victim said she asked for help from her father in get- ting a pail of water from their neighbor, before she went inside their toilet last Sept. 15, 2017.

While taking a bath, the girl noticed a mobile phone placed on top of the wall of their toilet. She reached for it and discovered that the phone belonged to her father.

The girl was shocked when she noticed that the phone’s video was turned on.

She checked the phone’s video files and saw herself in the video taking a bath.

She immediately deleted the video files and kept her father’s mobile phone. She said her father later asked her if she had seen his mobile phone.

The girl informed her mother of her father’s unscrupulous act, prompting the latter to report the incident to the police.

The accused failed to submit his counter-affidavit, prompting the prosecutor to resolve the complaint based on the evidence presented by the complainant.

Hupp said that what the accused did to his daughter was “indeed degrading and demeaning to the child’s dignity.”