Philippines' women-only cop station is crisis centre

By Manny Mogato

MANILA (Reuters) - The rows of fixed lines and a mobile phone hotline never stop ringing as trained counsellors alternately take calls from distressed women and children.

But this is no ordinary women's crisis centre run by some private and non-government groups for battered wives or rape victims and physically abused children in the Philippines.

The freshly painted lavender-and-pink office is actually a police station in Manila, manned by an all-woman team trained to handle crimes committed on women and children.

"Our job is really more difficult than solving murders and robberies," Chief Superintendent Yolanda Tanigue, head of the national police's women and children protection centre, told Reuters in an interview.

"We're dealing with crime victims who went through traumatic experiences and those who would rather keep silent about their ordeal than share their personal shame, guilt and self-pity."

Tanigue, the first Filipino woman police officer to be promoted to general since the Philippine National Police was created in 1991, heads about 3,000 women who work in similar centres in police stations across the country.

The Philippines' 110,000-strong national police force has about 10,000 women.

A trained social worker before she joined the police 28 years ago, Tanigue said she was concerned over the rise of domestic violence cases in the Philippines since 2004, when wife abuse was criminalised by law.