Short answer. It is official. Section 1 of Republic Act No. 8353 itself declares that the statute "shall be known as 'The Anti-Rape Law of 1997,'" so the short title is part of the enacted text, not an informal label, and it is safe to cite in pleadings, motions, or a complaint alongside the RA number.
What the law says
This Act shall be known as "The Anti-Rape Law of 1997."
RA 8353, Section 1 — The Anti-Rape Law Of 1997. Read the full provision →
Why a short title exists at all
Philippine statutes are enacted with a formal bill number and, very often, a short title supplied by the legislature itself in the opening section. That short title is not marketing or newsroom shorthand invented after the fact — it is drafted into the law and voted on along with everything else. Section 1 of Republic Act No. 8353 performs exactly that function: rather than leaving the public, courts, and lawyers to refer to the statute only by its bulky official number, Congress built the popular name directly into the text, so both forms point to the same enacted law with equal authority.
What RA 8353 actually did
Republic Act No. 8353 reclassified rape from a crime against chastity to a crime against persons and expanded how the offense is defined, a substantive shift that reordered where the crime sits within the Revised Penal Code and changed who may initiate a prosecution for it. The short title is simply the label Congress chose for that reform package as a whole; it does not narrow or qualify what the statute covers. Citing "the Anti-Rape Law of 1997" and citing "Republic Act No. 8353" refer to the identical body of law — one is a number, the other a name, and both trace back to the same section of the same Act.
Using the short title in practice
Because the short title is statutory text rather than informal usage, it is proper to use it in a complaint, a motion, or a legal opinion, whether alone or paired with the RA number for precision. Many practitioners prefer citing both together on first mention — the short title for readability and the RA number for exact statutory identification — since a reader unfamiliar with the numbering can immediately recognize the subject matter from the name, while the number lets anyone verify the provision against the Official Gazette or a verified legal database without ambiguity.
What the short title does not do
Naming a statute is not the same as summarizing every rule it contains, and "the Anti-Rape Law of 1997" is not itself a legal test or element of the crime — it is simply the label attached to the whole Act, which includes provisions well beyond the core definition of the offense, such as procedural rules on how a case may be prosecuted and the confidentiality protections given to a complainant. Someone relying only on the short title without reading the substantive sections of the Act risks missing important detail that the name alone cannot convey, since a short title orients a reader to the subject matter without describing what any particular section actually requires.