The Senate approved a bill amending the Safe Spaces Act (Republic Act No. 11313) in its third and final reading on Tuesday, January 14.
Through a unanimous affirmative vote on the amendments, the Safe Spaces Act will see new provisions to address gender-based online sexual harassment arising from the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies.
Senator Risa Hontiveros, the bill’s sponsor in the upper chamber, said that the amendments were made in response to calls to reform the law — particularly from “young women in schools.” “When we made the current law, no one knew what AI was. Ngayon po, talamak na ang deepfakes,” she said in her sponsorship speech in December 2024. “And pornography is being created with the use of these emerging technologies.”
New Provisions
In addition to tackling newer forms of online sexual harassment, amendments to the Safe Spaces Act expand the definition of public spaces to include streets and alleys in rural areas, fields, farms, coastal areas, and multi-purpose halls.
The amendments also include grooming in the law’s definition of terms as “a predatory conduct, act or pattern of acts of establishing a relationship of trust, or emotional connection by another with a child or someone who is believed to be a child and/or family guardian, and/or caregivers, whether in person or via electronic and other similar devices, for the purpose of perpetrating sexual abuse or exploitation.”
Hontiveros added that the bill responds to “multiple cases of teacher-predators… by ensuring that adults working in close proximity to children have no history of predatory behavior.”
Aside from the penalties established in the original version of the Safe Spaces Act, the proposed amendments also require the removal of violating images and videos from online platforms. “Sa pamamagitan ng bill na ito, victims will have the remedy of asking for the take-down of their digital images that violate this act,” Hontiveros said.
Existing penalties for violations of the Safe Spaces Act include imprisonment of 11 to 30 days or a fine of P30,000 and attendance in a Gender Sensitivity Seminar for the first offense, and one month and one day to six months in prison for succeeding offenses or fines of P50,000 and P100,000.
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