Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 7) — A lawmaker has filed a bill which seeks to imprison fraternity recruits who willingly allow themselves to undergo hazing rites.

Rizal 2nd district Rep. Fidel Nograles has filed House Bill No. 5248 or the “Expanded Anti-Hazing Act of 2019.”

The lawmaker noted that “there will be no hazing if there are no willing victims.”

Further, Nograles said that there is a legal void in Republic Act No. 11053 or the “Anti-Hazing Act of 2018” in which a penalty of reclusion temporal is imposed to everyone present in the hazing initiation.

“In the case of victims of hazing, they are not merely present in the conduct of hazing; instead, they are the very suspects of this barbaric practice which has no place in the society,” said Nograles in his explanatory note.

Under the bill, recruits, neophytes, applicants, and members of fraternities, sororities, or organizations who intentionally allowed themselves to be victims of hazing “shall be considered as accomplices to hazing.”

Further, the bill would also allow hazing victims to be discharged as a state witness citing the conspiracy of silence among the perpetrators.

RA 11053 was signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte last 2018 following hazing death of University of Santo Tomas freshman law student Horacio "Atio" Castillo III in the hands of Aegis Juris Fraternity members on September 2017.

The law penalizes violators with life imprisonment and a P3-million fine if a hazing rite leads to death, rape, sodomy, or mutilation. The previous anti-hazing law or the “Anti-Hazing Act of 1995” does not include a fine.

The most recent incident of hazing death was of Darwin Dormitorio, a 20-year old cadet at the Philippine Military Academy.