Did you know necrophilia is legal in the Philippines? That is to say it's not a crime.
The Philippines currently has no law explicitly criminalizing necrophilia or sexual acts with a corpse, but a bill filed by North Cotabato 3rd district Rep. Ma. Alana Samantha Taliño Santos seeks to change that.
Santos filed in the current 19th Congress House Bill (HB) No.9598, or the proposed Act defining the crime of cadaver desecration, providing penalties therefor and for other purposes.
"This bill aims to impose criminal and civil liabiltiies on offenders guilty of desecrating cadavers," read HB No.9598.
"The penalty of prision mayor shall be imposed upon any person who shall commit the crime of desecration of human cadaver as defined in this Act," it added.
The measure defines desecration of cadavers as any act committed after the death of a human being, including, but not limited to dismemberment, disfigurement, mutilation, burning, or any act committed to cause the dead body to be devoured, scattered, or dissipated.
It goes on to provide more specific language for the banned acts, one of them being "having sexual contact or activity with the dead", or necrophilia.
The Santos bill further lists down the following prohibitions: dumping of cadavers, including infants and fetuses, with the intent of abandoning the cadaver; mutilating the cadaver, including infants and fetuses, except for embalming and medical purposes; destruction of tombs and other private or public burial sites; and taking from the grave the personal property buried with the dead including; but not limited to, the coffin, clothing, and jewelry.
The bill is also seeking to outlaw the burying the dead, including infants and fetuses, without securing approval and appropriate permits from local health units; selling the cadaver onducting any medical study or experiment on the dead, including infants and fetuses without securing approval and appropriate permit from local health units.
Santos stressed in her proposed stature that Congress is mandated to give the highest priority to the enactment of measures that protect and enhance the right of all people to human dignity.
"The right to human dignity extends to the right of dignity of dead bodies. There have been instances in the past, some of which were highlighted in news reports, of dead bodies being dumped in inappropriate places," she said.
"In keeping with our mandate to protect and promote human dignity, there is an imperative need to supplement the dearth in laws by penalizing the crime of cadaver desecration as a separate crime," added Santos.
The measure is pending before the House Committee on Justice.
The quest to criminalize necrophilia extends back at least two decades. In 2006 Senator Manny Villar filed a bill criminalizing necrophilia.
Respect of the dead is the theme of the three bills filed by Senate President Manny Villar. These are Senate Bill (SB) 697 or the Desecration of the Dead Act; SB 2267 Criminalizing and Penalizing Necrophilia or Carnal Knowledge with the Dead; and SB 2298 or An Act Establishing National Cemeteries and Providing for their Administration and Maintenance.
According to Villar, Every year, on All Souls Day, Filipinos pay their respects to their loved ones who have passed on to show that the dead should never be forgotten and their memories should be preserved. However, there are not enough laws that promote respect for the dead. There are still reported incidents of desecration of the dead.
While many preserve the time-honored Filipino tradition of respecting the dead, there are still lawless elements out there who disrespect and desecrate the dead. We should put a stop to their detestable and heinous acts against our dearly departed, adds Villar.
Villar cites on his SB 697 that presently desecration of the dead is not defined and penalized as a crime under the Revised Penal Code. Anyone caught dumping a dead person, unless charged with murder or homicide, would only be guilty of violating the law on the burial of the dead person under the Code of Sanitation, which provides only a penalty of six months imprisonment or a fine of less than P1,000, further cites Villar.
Villars SB 697 proposes the penalty of prision mayor upon any person who shall commit the crime of desecration of the dead which include acts such as dumping of dead person including fetuses, mutilating of the dead, destruction of tombs or public burial sites, having sexual contact or activity with the dead or necrophilia, among others.
Villar recently modified through another bill, SB 2267, the penalty for necrophilia or the crime committed by a person who engages in sexual intercourse with a female corpse. Under the said bill, the penalty for necrophilia shall be reclusion perpetua to death and a fine of P100,000 to P500,000 at the discretion of the court.
Senator Villar refiled this bill in 2011. Senator Estrada also filed a similar bill.
Anyone who sexually abuses a living person has at least a chance of being punished as the law provides for it. However, if that someone were to do it to the dead, he will probably get away with it.
Two senators have filed separate bills criminalizing necrophilia to plug this apparent loophole in the country’s criminal justice system.
The condition is characterized by a “morbid desire to have sexual contact with a dead body, usually of men to perform a sexual act with a dead woman,” according to Mosby’s Medical Dictionary.
Sen. Manuel Villar said the “forcible imposition of manhood … directed against a lifeless female does not make the grisly act any less detestable and heinous.”
“In fact, this vicious bestiality is notoriously offensive and revolting to the feelings of the living even as it grossly desecrates the dead,” he said in explanatory note to his Senate Bill 1297.
Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, who filed SB 505, noted that under the present Revised Penal Code, “only defamation to blacken the memory of one who is dead is criminalized.”
The two bills seek to amend the Revised Penal Code and introduce a provision against necrophilia.
The Senate committee on justice and human rights conducted a preliminary hearing on the bills last month. Sen. Francis Escudero, the committee chair, acknowledged the absence of penalties against necrophilia under existing laws.
He said this was also probably the reason why no such cases have been found to have been reported to the Philippine National Police or the National Bureau of Investigation.
In 2013 Gloria Arroyo revived filed a bill seeking to punish necrophilia.
Former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wants stiff penalties for persons who commit necrophilia, or deriving sexual gratification from copulating with corpses, an act that she describes as “grisly and heinous.”
Arroyo and son Camarines Sur Rep. Diosdado Arroyo have re-filed their bill to criminalize necrophilia and to punish it with a prohibitive fine and imprisonment.
Necrophilia is not a criminal offense under present laws and at most, desecration of a corpse makes one liable for damages under the Civil Code, according to the Arroyos in an explanatory note.
They said necrophilia should be penalized under the Revised Penal Code.
Their bill defines necrophilia as committing sexual intercourse or anal and/or oral sex with a corpse.
But how often does necrophilia happen? Could Senator Escudero be right in saying the absence of a law criminalizing necrophilia is preventing cases of necrophilia from being reported to the PNP? Perhaps there are no cases of necrophilia to report. Escudero is not being very logical.
According to funeral home directors in Manila, necrophilia never happens.
Embalmers and funeral managers said yesterday that necrophilia — or the obsession of having sex with the dead — is just shop talk handed down from one generation to another but with no actual basis.
"Kathang kutsero lang yan (That’s just shop talk)," said Jun Luzona, funeral director of Nacional Funeral homes in Quezon City.
He was reacting to a bill filed by Senate President Manuel Villar, which seeks life imprisonment for any person who commits necrophilia.
Luzona said the story about an embalmer raping a dead woman has been circulating since he was a young boy, but for the last 16 years as funeral director, he has never heard an actual case in Metro Manila.
He said the practice was impossible in their funeral parlor since their embalmers are professionals who passed a licensure exam given by the Department of Health.
"Siguro sa mga malayong lugar pero sa Metro Manila impossible mangyari yan (Maybe in faraway places it might happen but in Metro Manila it’s impossible)," he said.
He said they have high respect for the dead and relatives are always on guard during the embalming process.
"Kwentong kutsero, kathang isip lang yan," agreed Leah de la Cruz of the Cinco Estrella Memorial Chapel on Quirino highway in Quezon City.
She said in her 20 years as funeral director, she has not heard of a single case of necrophilia in funeral parlors in Metro Manila.
De la Cruz said the story about embalmers raping a dead woman was circulated as a smear campaign by rival funeral parlors to get more clients.
"Paninira lang yan (That’s just part of a smear campaign)," she said.
She said if such a thing happens, relatives would be up in arms against anyone who desecrates their dead.
Other managers and embalmers who do not want to be named also said that a law penalizing necrophilia is not necessary because such case seldom, if ever, happens.
They claimed necrophilia is popular in books and movies but in real life it’s just an urban legend –at least, in the Philippines.
Laws need to address more urgent things than a mere figment of the imagination, a funeral manager lamented.
That article is 20 years old so it may be a bit dated. Has there been an increase in necrophilia throughout the Philippines during that time? Such data is not readily available.
What if necrophilia is just one of many sexual orientations? One lawmaker suggested as much when the SOGIE bill was being debated.
The proposed bill that would ban discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE) will not legalize necrophilia and pedophilia.
This is contrary to the suggestion of a resource person from religious group Coalition of Concerned Families during a House hearing on Wednesday that sexual orientation may also encompass necrophilia and pedophilia.
Lawyer Lyndon Caña from the group said that the anti-discrimination bill, also known as the SOGIE Equality Bill, does not put a limit to sexual orientations as it uses the term “LGBTQ+”
The plus is there to denote other sexual orientations and gender identities not encompassed under the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) acronym.
“When will this end? When will the orientation end?” Caña said. “For example, if an old man is attracted to very young children, that’s sexual orientation. That’s pedophilia. So included din ba yan sa fundamental human right? How about those who are sexually attracted to the dead? Necrophilia.”
Unlike being gay, straight or bisexual, necrophilia and pedophilia are not sexual orientations. Both are considered as paraphilic disorders under the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Rep. Geraldine Roman (Bataan) was also enraged at the absurdity of the suggestion linking the LGBTQ+ community to pedophilia and necrophilia.
“How dare you! We are here in the House of Representatives, you will seriously think that we will legislate something that would allow necrophilia and pedophilia?” Roman said.
The SOGIE Equality Bill does not contain any language that would legalize necrophilia or pedophilia.
The SOGIE does not need to legalize necrophilia because it is already legal. If Rep. Roman is incensed that anyone would think that the House would pass a bill legalizing necrophilia, then why can the Congress not pass a bill criminalizing it? And let's not forget that homosexuality was once considered a paraphilia so the arguments in this article and from Rep. Roman against necrophilia being a sexual orientation are quite illogical. The slippery slope is very real.
Certainly necrophilia is disgusting and anyone who commits such an act would be rightly shunned from decent society. Filipinos make a big to-do over the dead every single year during Undas so they would not stand for such a desecration of the corpse of their loved one. Why then has this bill criminalizing necrophilia never been passed into law? Perhaps the funeral directors in Manila are right. It is a fictitious crime that never happens and there are more urgent things needing attention.
But filing such a bill does get headlines so there is that.
