BAGUIO CITY, Dec. 3 -- For the first time in so many years, 29-year-old Jobelee Siagan publicly shared that she was abused at age 4. The trauma, she said, continues to resurface, often waking her in tears despite the decades that have passed.

"This will be the first time I am saying this in public because this is very private in my family, but I was once a victim of violence at the age of four," Siagan, vice president of the Cordillera Youth Leaders, told the Philippine News Agency in an interview on Tuesday.

Siagan described how the trauma resurfaces even decades later.

"There are times when I forgot, when I recall but pretend to the public as if nothing had happened. But as soon as the trigger reemerges, the event recurs as if it hap...