Short answer. Yes, the responsible one is. Under Section 31 of Republic Act No. 7610, when the offender is a corporation, partnership or association, the officer or employee responsible for the violation personally suffers the penalty — and in its maximum period. The company cannot serve as a shield for the individual who is actually to blame.
What the law says
When the offender is a corporation, partnership or association, the officer or employee thereof who is responsible for the violation of this Act shall suffer the penalty imposed in its maximum period
RA 7610, Section 31 — Common Penal Provisions. Read the full provision →
The law reaches the person, not just the entity
A corporation cannot be sent to prison, so a law that stopped at the company would leave child-protection offences effectively unpunished whenever a business was involved. Section 31 of RA 7610 closes that gap. It provides that when the offender is a corporation, partnership or association, the officer or employee thereof who is responsible for the violation shall suffer the penalty. The criminal responsibility is pinned on a human being — the officer or employee behind the violation — rather than dissolving into the juridical entity. The corporate form does not act as a shield here; the individual who is responsible for the act answers for it personally.
"Responsible" is the key word
The provision does not sweep in every officer of the company automatically. It targets the officer or employee who is responsible for the violation. That word matters: liability attaches to the person actually connected to the wrongful act — the one who committed, directed, or was accountable for it — not to an uninvolved director simply because of a title on an organisational chart. So membership on a board or a senior position, standing alone, is not what triggers Section 31; participation in or responsibility for the specific violation is. This keeps the penalty aimed at genuine culpability rather than at the mere fact of holding office in the offending entity.
And the penalty is at its maximum
Section 31 does not merely make the responsible officer liable — it makes the exposure heavier. The officer or employee shall suffer the penalty imposed in its maximum period. This is one of several aggravating rules the section lists; it treats a violation committed through a business entity as more serious, warranting the top end of the applicable range. The same section imposes maximum penalties in other situations too, such as when the perpetrator is a close relative of the child or a public officer, and it directs a court-determined fine to be used for the child victim's rehabilitation. The thrust throughout is to punish those in a position of trust or power more severely.
What this does not answer
Section 31 fixes who bears the penalty and that it falls at its maximum; it does not by itself define the underlying offence or set the base penalty — those come from the specific provision of RA 7610 that was violated. Nor does it resolve, in the abstract, whether a particular officer was truly "responsible," which is a fact-heavy question turning on that person's actual role in the act. Being an officer of a company connected to a child-protection complaint is a serious matter, and anyone in that position should obtain individual legal advice rather than assume the corporation will absorb the consequences.