The Philippine National Police (PNP) Women’s Desks in the provinces of Region I handled 143 cases committed against women in 2002, 14.9 percent lower than the cases handled in 2001. About 30.8 percent were rape cases which declined by 32.3 percent. Physical injury, which was the next common case in 2002, also went down by 6.7 percent. However, murder/homicide/parricide, theft/ robbery/hold-up and other cases increased for the said year.

Except for Ilocos Sur, all the other provinces had lower number of cases in 2002. This province had the most number of cases at 37.1 percent, 20.8 percent of which were rape cases. Meanwhile, La Union, posting a 10.5 percent share of the total cases in the region for the same year, had 53.3 percent of reported rape cases in the province.

The decreasing number of reported cases against women, especially for rape, could be due to women’s increasing bravery to fight their abusers and report the abuses to proper authorities and PNP’s intensive information campaign on crime prevention.

Majority of the women believed in the justice system as 81.8 percent filed their cases in court in 2002. However, this was lower than the 2001 filed cases by 3.9 percentage points and 89.7 percent of the filed cases were still under trial. The high percentage of filed cases under trial could be possibly due to the long judiciary process because of complainants’ lack of interest to pursue the case and insufficient evidences. In the same year, the percentage share of amicable settlements went down by 5.2 percentage points from the 10.1 percent of the previous year.

All the cases in La Union were filed in court in 2001 and 2002 and all of these were pending trial. Meanwhile, the percentage share of filed cases to total cases in Ilocos Norte and Pangasinan declined in 2002. Moreover, all the filed cases in both provinces were under trial.

In 2002, 81.8 percent of the rape cases in the region were filed in court, 94.4 percent of which were pending in court. All of the filed rape cases in La Union, Pangasinan and Ilocos Norte were under trial.

 1/ Includes unjust vexation, malicious mischief, abduction, slander by deeds, kidnapping, oral defamation,

2/ Includes suspect at large, suspect arrested, perpetrator convicted and warrant issued.

Source: Philippine National Police