"We admit it. We've been spreading a scandal video online, and we're just warming up."  
Thus said the women's organization Gabriela at a press conference held recently to announce a new and innovative campaign to raise public awareness on electronic violence against women (E-VAW), a new form of VAW that has emerged with the rise of Internet-based and mobile communications.
"E-VAW is alarmingly an emerging trend. Over the last couple of years we have heard of and actually assisted women unaware that their most private moments were recorded and later uploaded and disseminated publicly, of rape victims who are victimized all over again with the spread of their videos. There is a pressing need to confront this issue, ranging from crafting laws that squarely address the problem, penalizing perpetrators, and most importantly by raising the public's consciousness on the gravity of the issue and encouraging them to be part of putting a stop to this new form of violence against women," said Joms Salvador, deputy secretary general of Gabriela.
"Women victims are humiliated, shunned by their families and friends and stigmatized in public as their scandal videos circulate online and get passed on from one person to another. Some of them are disowned by their family, expelled from school, or even contemplate suicide as a consequence of having a scandal video. That this cycle of violence occurs is the real scandal," said Salvador.
Dubbed as E-VAW or Electronic Violence Awareness Week, the campaign is jointly sponsored by Gabriela, Gabriela Women's Party-list and Gabriela-Youth using Internet-based information and advocacy materials created by award-winning advertising agency DM9JaymeSyfu. The campaign, which is part of Gabriela's long-running I Vow to Fight VAW campaign, hopes to raise public awareness on VAW and enjoin especially those who use the internet to act to end VAW.
The campaign was kicked off by the online circulation of "Manila Scandal Part 2," a video shot like any other scandal video but which features a young woman narrating the troubles she had to go through for having a publicized sex video. Uploaded on video-sharing website Dailymotion, the video has already generated more than 20,000 views in less than a week.
"It aims to catch the interest of those who usually watch scandal videos so they could hopefully reflect on the ill effects of spreading and watching them," Salvador said.
A pledge site hosted at www.fightevaw.com  was also set up to gather the public's commitment to end E-VAW.
The campaign had an initial weeklong run starting June 30 featuring a campus tour to discuss violence against women and public viewing of online advocacy materials with a companion Facebook-based campaign named "Bury the Past Project" that aims to disrupt search engines to push down results of real scandal videos.
"The woman on the next scandal video could be your sister, your friend or even yourself. Electronic violence can happen to anyone. That's why it is very important for us women and men alike to be aware of our rights, to know the perils of E-VAW and to actively take part in putting an end to it," added Salvador.