Abused Pinay wins case vs Hong Kong employers in Canada

MANILA, Philippines — A Filipina won a Canadian $55,000 (almost P2 million) award from the human rights tribunal of British Columbia, which found she had been held as a “virtual slave” and subjected to sexual assault and other abuses by members of the Hong Kong family that had hired her as a nanny.

The award — $5,866.89 for wages and $50,000 for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect — “is one of the largest awards in the tribunal’s history,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

According to CBC, British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal found that the family had brought the mother of two with them to Canada in 2013 “and abused her in the hotel suite where they stayed while looking for a house.”

The husband sexually assaulted her, the wife humiliated her and “even the children made fun of her,” the report said.

In the decision, tribunal member Catherine McCreary wrote that the Filipina “was isolated, underfed and treated like she was sub-human; all because she was a young Filipino mother who needed the job to take care of her own children. I would like to think that this behaviour does not occur in B.C.”

According to the CBC report, in Hong Kong, the Filipina, who was hired through an agency, was made to work from 5:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. and had to “eat her food while standing,” with cuts to her $600 Cdn (around P21,400) salary if she sat down.

It was in Hong Kong where the husband first began abusing her.

When the couple decided to move to Canada, the Filipina was “pressured” to join them. While she was being abused there, the husband “warned her that she would be sent home if she told anyone and that she should be worried about her children,” McCreary wrote.

On August 18, 2013, the Filipina decided to escape while taking out the garbage even is “she had no money, no passport, no extra clothing, no toiletries, and no eyeglasses. She knew no one.”

When she contacted Canadian police, she was “initially told her the jurisdiction for solving her problem was in Hong Kong,” the CBC report said. However, the police called her back when her employers reported her missing.

“The nanny ultimately made her way to a Vancouver safe house for women who have been victims of sexual exploitation or human trafficking” but “can’t work in Canada and does not qualify for social assistance,” CBC said.

The couple have since returned to Hong Kong and only the husband appeared by video conference at the tribunal to claim they had treated her “like a member of their family.”