Creeps

What’s worse than a kiss-and-tell lothario? A lothario who secretly videotapes his sexual encounters, and then posts them on the Internet.

During the Marcos years, that sort of creep was personified by a provincial governor from Northern Luzon.

Today it’s Hayden Kho.

Anyone who has seen the video footages of Kho with different women, now proliferating on the Internet and in pirated DVDs, will tell you that capturing his sexcapades on video appears to be the handiwork of Kho himself.

Uploading the materials on the Internet, on the other hand, could be attributed to other people, though Kho can’t easily wiggle out of this. Yesterday the National Bureau of Investigation summoned Kho together with his partner, Vicki Belo. The NBI reportedly wants to know how Belo, cosmetic surgeon to the stars, got hold of a sex video featuring her lover with another woman, which prompted her to dump Kho several months ago.

Kho, in case you missed the entertainment headlines, subsequently tried to kill himself, and then tearfully filed a motion for reconsideration with his fuming ex, who is old enough to be his mother. The MR was granted and, until recently, Kho and Belo were still a couple.

Also likely to be summoned by the NBI is another doctor identified as Eric Johnston Chua, said to be Kho’s friend. Chua is suspected to have had a hand in uploading the sex videos on the Internet.

The motive for spreading the video in cyberspace could lead NBI probers to the culprit(s). It certainly wasn’t Katrina Halili, the victim in this scandal.

Other women should thank the young actress for mustering the courage to surface and file a complaint against Kho. Halili could have simply kept quiet and pretended that her sex video with Kho has been digitally altered and the woman in the grainy footage is not her. This was the tack adopted by the so-called Brunei beauties when video footage showing them in hard-core porn scenes proliferated a few years back.

Now that Halili has gone public with her complaint, it could help move legislation to spare others from similar humiliation.

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Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago has a pending bill seeking to penalize “photo and video voyeurism.”

Amid the Katrina-Hayden scandal, Sen. Pia Cayetano has also filed a similar bill, which seeks to prohibit and penalize the recording, sharing, showing or exhibition of private acts without the consent of the persons involved.

These new laws are needed particularly with the advances in information and communication technology. For P4,000, you can buy at any major shopping mall a tiny wireless surveillance camera, mount it in a concealed spot and watch on a computer screen an event or person you are interested in from several hundred meters away.

Camera phones have also made snooping and invasion of privacy easier. These days anyone can be a paparazzo. The subjects of such scrutiny won’t mind, mainly because they won’t know, if the photos or video footage simply end up in the personal collection of a fan or souvenir hunter. But making the images public is another matter. Everyone is entitled to a measure of privacy, including celebrities and public officials.

Sex workers, unless they make a living as porn actors, also do not relish ending up in publicly circulated sex videos without their knowledge or permission.

Among the biggest victims of voyeurs are teenage students who have the misfortune of falling for sleazebags in the same league as Kho.

A few years ago a sex video of a couple who looked like high school or college students spread. The rumor was that the two were both students in one of the top exclusive schools in the country, and that the girl was eventually forced to go abroad. The video spawned a porn video series whose titles all ended with the word “scandal.”

Fearing social humiliation, these young girls and their parents are unlikely to pursue a complaint for the spread of sex videos of the teenager and the guy she thought was the love of her life.

Now Katrina Halili, barely out of her teens, has overcome shame and is fighting back. Her case will show other women that there are existing laws protecting them from such humiliation, if they will dare to file a complaint.

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A five-year-old law offers broad protection for women and children against physical and psychological violence.

The law, Republic Act 9262, was enacted in March 2004. I was surprised when this law was passed with no opposition from men.

Under the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004, a man stands to lose the kids, the house and the car, and is prohibited from even peering into the window to get a glimpse of his children if he is accused of domestic violence by his wife, common-law wife or regular girlfriend.

The forms of violence penalized under RA 9262 include treating women and children as sex objects, making demeaning sexual remarks, and psychological acts that cause mental or emotional suffering such as ridicule and humiliation. Also included is the sale of audio-video materials showing the woman in a sexual pose or act.  

The maximum penalty under this law is 12 years with a fine of up to P300,000 plus mandatory psychiatric treatment for the offender.

Kho and his friend Chua may soon face a criminal indictment, a separate complaint for violating human rights, plus the suspension and possible loss of their license to practice their profession. 

The circus generated in Congress by Katrina Halili should also be put to good use. Laws against video voyeurism and cyber porn must be passed soon.

Creeps who chronicle their own sexual encounters, and creeps who spread the video in cyberspace need to see a psychiatrist.

And they need to be sent to prison.