Short answer. Yes. Section 7 of the child protection law punishes trading and dealing with children, including buying and selling a child for money or any other consideration or barter, with reclusion temporal to reclusion perpetua — imposed in its maximum period where the victim is under twelve years of age.
What the law says
Any person who shall engage in trading and dealing with children including, but not limited to, the act of buying and selling of a child for money, or for any other consideration, or barter, shall suffer the penalty of reclusion temporal to reclusion perpetua.
RA 7610, Section 7 — Child Trafficking. Read the full provision →
What the law says
The penalty provided herein shall be imposed in its maximum period when the perpetrator is an ascendant, parent guardian, stepparent or collateral relative within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity
RA 7610, Section 31 — Common Penal Provisions. Read the full provision →
The wording is deliberately hard to slip out of
Any person who shall engage in trading and dealing with children including, but not limited to, the act of buying and selling of a child for money, or for any other consideration, or barter, shall suffer the penalty of reclusion temporal to reclusion perpetua. Three phrases close the obvious escapes. Trading and dealing is the conduct punished, so a completed sale is not required. Buying and selling is expressly only an example, the enumeration being open. And consideration or barter puts the arrangement in which no money changes hands — a debt written off, goods exchanged, a place to live — squarely inside the section.
Family involvement makes it worse, not lawful
Parents sometimes assume that an arrangement they agreed to cannot be the crime the section describes. The Act treats the opposite as true. Under Section 31 The penalty provided herein shall be imposed in its maximum period when the perpetrator is an ascendant, parent guardian, stepparent or collateral relative within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity. Family position is an aggravating circumstance, which presupposes that a relative can be the offender. The same section raises the penalty to its maximum for a person previously convicted under the Act, and provides that a foreign offender is deported immediately after serving sentence.
The victim's age moves the penalty
The range itself is wide, and where a case falls within it is not left to impression. Section 7 directs that the penalty be imposed in its maximum period when the victim is under twelve years of age, which is a sentencing rule rather than an element — a child of thirteen or fifteen is no less protected by the section, the exposure is simply set lower in the range. Establishing the child's age is therefore part of the case rather than background to it, and the civil registry record is what usually settles it.
More than one statute may be engaged
Section 11 adds a consequence aimed at the businesses around this conduct: establishments and enterprises that promote or facilitate child trafficking are to be closed immediately and their licence to operate cancelled, without prejudice to the owner or manager being prosecuted under this Act, the Revised Penal Code or other special laws. That last clause matters, because a separate anti-trafficking statute now also governs trafficking in persons, children included, and a single set of facts can fall under more than one law. Which charge fits is a question for the prosecutor, and the reason to bring the facts to counsel rather than to decide it yourself.
Related provisions
- RA 7610, Section 7 — Child Trafficking
- RA 7610, Section 11 — Sanctions On Establishments
- RA 7610, Section 31 — Common Penal Provisions