Short answer. No. The VAWC law makes case records confidential and forbids publishing a victim's name, address, school, employer, or other identifying details — in any format — without her consent. A journalist or anyone else who does so can be punished for contempt of court, and by imprisonment and a fine.
What the law says
Whoever publishes or causes to be published, in any format, the name, address, telephone number, school, business address, employer, or other identifying information of a victim or an immediate family member, without the latter's consent, shall be liable to the contempt power of the court.
RA 9262, Section 44 — Confidentiality. Read the full provision →
The records are confidential by law
Section 44 of Republic Act No. 9262 begins by protecting the paper trail. It provides that all records pertaining to cases of violence against women and their children including those in the barangay shall be confidential, and that public officers and employees and public or private clinics and hospitals shall respect the victim's right to privacy. This sweeps in more than court files. Barangay records, police blotters, and medical records touching the case are meant to stay private. The premise is that a victim who comes forward should not have her ordeal turned into public information, whether by an official who handled the case or by anyone else who gets hold of the details.
Publishing identifying details is prohibited
The section then targets publication head-on: whoever publishes or causes to be published, in any format, the name, address, telephone number, school, business address, employer, or other identifying information of a victim or an immediate family member, without the latter's consent, shall be liable to the contempt power of the court. Two features stand out. The phrase in any format reaches print, broadcast, and online or social media alike — a post can violate it as much as a front page. And the ban covers not just the victim but an immediate family member, since naming them can expose her just as surely.
The penalties
The consequences come in two layers. First, the offender is liable to the contempt power of the court, which the court can wield directly against someone who breaches the confidentiality it is protecting. Second, the section attaches a criminal penalty: a person who violates the provision suffers imprisonment of one year and a fine that the law caps in the hundreds of thousands of pesos. Between the court's contempt power and the separate criminal penalty, the law gives real teeth to the rule. Publishing a victim's identity is not a grey area to be risked lightly.
What it does and does not stop
The rule protects identity, not the discussion of abuse in general. The media can report on VAWC as an issue, cover proceedings in the abstract, and inform the public, so long as they do not expose the victim's or her family's identifying details without consent. Consent is the hinge: with the victim's genuine consent, publication of her information is not caught by the ban. The prohibition binds everyone who publishes, not only professional journalists, so an ordinary person sharing a victim's name online is exposed to the same liability. When in doubt, the safe course is to withhold anything that identifies her.