1. withdrawal of financial support or preventing the victim from engaging in any
legitimate profession, occupation, business or activity, except in cases wherein the
other spouse/partner objects on valid, serious and moral grounds as defined in
Article 73 of the Family Code;
2. deprivation or threat of deprivation of financial resources and the right to the use
and enjoyment of the conjugal, community or property owned in common;
3. destroying household property;
4. controlling the victims' own money or properties or solely controlling the conjugal
money or properties.
It should be stressed that the acts enumerated in the aforequoted provision are attributable to
research that has exposed the dimensions and dynamics of battery. The acts described here are
also found in the U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.90 Hence, the
argument advanced by petitioner that the definition of what constitutes abuse removes the difference
between violent action and simple marital tiffs is tenuous.
There is nothing in the definition of VAWC that is vague and ambiguous that will confuse petitioner in
his defense. The acts enumerated above are easily understood and provide adequate contrast
between the innocent and the prohibited acts. They are worded with sufficient definiteness that
persons of ordinary intelligence can understand what conduct is prohibited, and need not guess at
its meaning nor differ in its application.91 Yet, petitioner insists92 that phrases like "depriving or
threatening to deprive the woman or her child of a legal right," "solely controlling the conjugal or
common money or properties," "marital infidelity," and "causing mental or emotional anguish" are so
vague that they make every quarrel a case of spousal abuse. However, we have stressed that the
"vagueness" doctrine merely requires a reasonable degree of certainty for the statute to be upheld –
not absolute precision or mathematical exactitude, as petitioner seems to suggest. Flexibility, rather
than meticulous specificity, is permissible as long as the metes and bounds of the statute are clearly
delineated. An act will not be held invalid merely because it might have been more explicit in its
wordings or detailed in its provisions.93
There is likewise no merit to the contention that R.A. 9262 singles out the husband or father as the
culprit. As defined above, VAWC may likewise be committed "against a woman with whom the
person has or had a sexual or dating relationship." Clearly, the use of the gender-neutral word
"person" who has or had a sexual or dating relationship with the woman encompasses even lesbian
relationships. Moreover, while the law provides that the offender be related or connected to the
victim by marriage, former marriage, or a sexual or dating relationship, it does not preclude the
application of the principle of conspiracy under the Revised Penal Code (RPC). Thus, in the case of
Go-Tan v. Spouses Tan,94 the parents-in-law of Sharica Mari L. Go-Tan, the victim, were held to be
proper respondents in the case filed by the latter upon the allegation that they and their son (GoTan's husband) had community of design and purpose in tormenting her by giving her insufficient
financial support; harassing and pressuring her to be ejected from the family home; and in
repeatedly abusing her verbally, emotionally, mentally and physically.
R.A. 9262 is not violative of the
due process clause of the Constitution.
Petitioner bewails the disregard of R.A. 9262, specifically in the issuance of POs, of all protections
afforded by the due process clause of the Constitution. Says he: "On the basis of unsubstantiated
allegations, and practically no opportunity to respond, the husband is stripped of family, property,
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