Asela Briñas was the school director of Challenger Montessori. In January 2010, after seeing certain text messages which tend to show that certain students (Micolie Rosauro and Keziah Polojan, both 16 years old) were bullying her daughter, she called Micolie and Keziah to the faculty room where she berated them in front of teachers and their schoolmates. Briñas uttered the following to them: “pinakamalalandi, pinakamalilibog, pinakamahader at hindot, mga putang ina kayo.”
Thereafter, the children filed a case for Grave Oral Defamation in relation to Section 10(a) of R.A. 7610 against Briñas.
The trial court convicted Briñas and the Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.
ISSUE: Whether or not the conviction is proper.
HELD: No. There is no such crime of Grave Oral Defamation in relation to Section 10(a) of R.A. 7610. Section 10(a) is clear in that it punishes acts of child abuse which are “not covered by the Revised Penal Code.” Hence, Briñas cannot be convicted of grave oral defamation under the RPC in relation to Section 10(a) of R.A. 7610. From the plain language of Section 10(a), the acts punished under it and those punished under the RPC are mutually exclusive. Acts which are already covered by the RPC are excluded from the coverage of Section 10(a).
ISSUE 2: May Briñas be convicted under Section 10(a) of R.A. 7610?
HELD 2: No. The prosecution failed to prove that Briñas, in committing the acts complained of, had the specific intent to debase, degrade or demean the intrinsic worth of a child as a human being.
“Debasement” is defined as the act of reducing the value, quality, or purity of something; “degradation,” on the other hand, is a lessening of a person’s or thing’s character or quality while “demean” means to lower in status, condition, reputation, or character.
The only acts proven to have been committed by Briñas are the hurling of invectives, made in a spur of the moment and in the heat of anger, against the children, after she learned of the latter’s mischief against her own daughter. Unfortunately for the prosecution, these acts, by themselves, do not show intent to debase, degrade or demean the minors which is an indispensable element of the crime charged.
