As a parent myself, I know that nothing brings us more anxiety than a report that our child is being bullied. Are we helpless? Or do we simply not know the laws and support available to us? Through this article, I would like to walk parents through the laws on bullying and offer this assurance: neither anxious parents nor bullied children are without recourse. The law provides clear pathways to protect children and hold wrongdoers accountable.
What is bullying?
Under the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013, bullying is any severe or repeated physical, verbal, or electronic act by one or more students against another that causes fear of physical or emotional harm, damages property, or creates a hostile environment. Nowadays, this behavior is no longer confined to the classrooms but spills over even into recreational spaces and online platforms.
How do we protect children and hold wrongdoers accountable? It begins with early detection at home. A strong parent-child relationship helps children feel safe sharing their struggles, allowing parents to notice behavioral changes and address issues before they escalate.
Beyond the home, parents should also actively attend Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) meetings to understand and support the school's preventive policies. To empower this collaboration, schools must also ensure that their anti-bullying policy is clearly published and accessible to everyone.
If a child reports being bullied, parents must make sure to gather evidence. The law requires proof to sustain a complaint. Given that minors interact heavily online, cyberbullying is often the most accessible to document. In such cases, parents should secure unedited screenshots or screen recordings of chat logs on messaging applications like Messenger or Viber, social media posts, and public threads targeting the child. While doing so, they must ensure that timestamps are visible to establish the repeated nature of the behavior required by law.
The law also evaluates the physical and psychological impact of the abuse. If the bullying involves physical contact, parents must secure a medical examination, as a physician’s certificate serves as proof of injury. Furthermore, because the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013 recognizes damage to a child’s emotional well-being, obtaining an evaluation from a guidance counselor, detailing trauma may be helpful for their case. This may be paired with other pieces of evidence like photographs of injuries, the child's own written statement for the school's Intake Sheet, witness testimonies from classmates, and a personal log of every incident. School records showing a drop in grades or high absenteeism also serve as circumstantial evidence that the bullying has disrupted the child's education.
With this evidence, parents must initiate action within the school. A written report should be filed with the principal or guidance officer within 24 to 48 hours of the incident. Exercising their special parental authority, schools must act on their own initiative to enforce these protections, which includes the need to monitor learners who are vulnerable to committing targeted acts and identifying possible victims.
By law, every school in the Philippines must maintain a properly constituted Learner Formation Officer (LFO), which is required to launch an investigation upon report. It is the school’s duty to separate the students, ensure safety, and conduct private interviews, culminating in a resolution within 30 days that details sanctions ranging from counseling to expulsion.
The recourse available to parents is subject to strict timelines, with schools required to render a decision within thirty (30) days of a complaint being filed. If an incident escalates into potential criminal behavior under the Revised Penal Code, the school head is legally mandated to notify law enforcement agencies. For severe offenses resulting in serious physical injuries or death, the case must be handled according to the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act (RA 9344). Parents can expect schools to coordinate with the Women and Children Protection Desks (WCPD) and the Local Social Welfare and Development Office (LSWDO) for child-sensitive investigations and referrals. Concurrently, parents are not required to wait for the school's administrative process to conclude; they can independently and immediately initiate a complaint with these authorities. The prescriptive period for these depends on the nature of the charge and the governing law.
While emotions understandably run high, parents must remember to always rely on these legal processes rather than confronting the offending child directly or immediately publicizing the incident on social media. Taking matters into your own hands can jeopardize your case and violate privacy laws. Bullying is not a rite of passage, and when it threatens our youth, the legal system stands ready to intervene.
(Ian Norman E. Dato is an Undersecretary of the Department of Justice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the official views or position of the Department of Justice.)vv
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