By Ven Arigo
Bohol ChronicleTwo Boholana domestic helpers, both single in their 20s, have suffered from cruelties of their respective employers in separate foreign lands. One has been raped and made a sex slave. The other would have died by stabbing.
The first case involves 23-year-old Meya (not her real name) who left for Jeddah last Christmas only to find her "calvary" in the insatiable lust of her male boss who sexually abused her since April.
The second case involves 27-year-old Donellen (not her real identity, too) who would have been killed by stabbing had she not ran away - without returning - from her Singaporean employer.
Meya, from a barrio of a Second District town, contacted thru text messaging her parents sometime last month and told them her employer, the male owner of the house where she works, had sexually assaulted her.
The mother of the overseas Filipino worker (OFW), in her letter seeking assistance from government, used the term "giabusohan (abused)" in describing that particular incident occurring to her daughter.
Meya communicated again to her parents, which was also their last and only other contact since then, just last May 4, begging them to find ways rescuing her.
Rep. Edgar Chatto's office is now coordinating with the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and other agencies on Meya's case as well as Donellen's.
In her same letter, Meya's mother recounted, in specific details as narrated in the May 4 text message from her daughter, how the latter had been repeatedly "used" by her maniac boss right inside his house.
Meya told her parents about the pains and self-humiliation that she had to undergo.
She---with whatever is left of her degraded human person---thus now screams for swiftest rescue from the claws of her sex-starved Arab employer.
While Meya could no longer be contacted at her cellphone number, neither her hiring agency has been found in the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) list of accredited recruiters.
In the case of Donellen, his father Elpidio Sendo of Catigbian reported to Chatto's office that his daughter has reportedly been in the safekeeping of the Philippine Embassy in Singapore since running away from her brutal male employer.
The Singaporean's wife would also easily harm their Boholana maid whenever she could slightly miss certain house chores because of overwork.
Donellen then could no longer bear the pains of physical and verbal maltreatment so that at one distress time she attempted to end her suffering---and very own life---by poisoning.
She confided in a November 2007 letter to her parents her drinking of a strong cleansing chemical.
Lucky for here, the potentially fatal substance was too strong that she vomited as soon as she took an amount of the chemical.
Immediately after the attempt of her male boss to stab her, Donellen sought refuge from fellow OFWs who helped her to the police.
But the migrant worker was instead wrongly accused and counter-charged with stealing by her employer couple.
Chatto's office is awaiting result of its inquiry on whether the OFW is still in the protective custody of the Philippine Embassy in Singapore.
The congressman maintains the OWF Action Line, a local broadcast program segment heard worldwide on Saturdays that assists migrant workers and links them to their families.
Meya and Donellen, both farmhand daughters, yearn to return home as soon as possible.
Donellen is an education graduate but who had not taken the board examinations until she found a chance to work abroad on hope of freeing her family from the stings of poverty.
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