Investigate the employer, not just the servant
Claudette Abela Baldacchino is interested in deprivation. This is real deprivation: having to travel round the world, from The Philippines to Malta, probably leaving your children behind, to take up a position in the home of somebody who wants a live-in servant.
This woman has been charged with seriously injuring her employer and stealing Lm100 worth of clothes and make-up – forgive me for being cynical, but that’s always my reaction when I see a perfectly round figure. I really can’t help wondering what the back-story might be, but I can’t help thinking that it’s not going to come out in court, not from the lips of a terrified foreign woman who doesn’t have a clue what’s going to happen to her and who probably isn’t aware of her rights. Now she’s ended up on remand until her former employer deems fit to return from ‘abroad’ and testify. I hope it’s not going to be a repeat scenario of the African man who ended up ‘admitting’ before a magistrate that he had attacked policemen when witnesses told the press that the policemen had attacked him.
I don’t know who these people are and I really don’t want to know. What I have to say is this: that before the authorities rush to keep this woman on remand and prosecute her for attacking her employer, they should find out whether she was kept as a slave on a pittance, as so many of these Filippina servants are. I know homes where the Filippina live-in servant has a work permit, a proper salary and working-hours that are within the law. But I also know of others where I suspect the servant is actually a glorified slave, on duty all the hours God sends because she is right there under the household roof for 24 hours, and paid a miserable amount that is below the minimum wage and with no national insurance paid. I even used to know one who slept, like something out of Dickens, on a pull-out bed in the cramped nook beneath the stairs. The servant doesn’t dare complain because she is afraid she will be thrown out, and she is scared to report her employers because she doesn’t want to be deported.
Filipino woman charged with stabbing at Portomaso
A Filipino woman pleaded not guilty yesterday to seriously injuring a Maltese woman in her Portomaso apartment.
Aniceta Belara Delima, 48, who resides, in St Julian’s was charged before magistrate Joseph Apap Bologna with seriously injuring Denise Bonello and stealing e232 worth of make-up and other items including clothing.
The magistrate remanded the Filipino woman as the alleged victim had not testified as yet as she was abroad.
Police Inspectors Bernard Spiteri and Trevor Micallef prosecuted while Dr Ludvig Galea represented the accused.
The Malta Independent, 20 September 2008
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What??? Don’t they investigate the employer in such cases?? I’m sincerely flabbergasted. Aren’t they at least entitled to a regular trial? “Msieken”, and I truly mean it.
What about those immigrants you see on building sites? Have they insurance cover and protection at work? How come they are involved in accidents so often, sometimes fatally , and yet you don’t hear of any employer being prosecuted for failing to safegaurd their employees health.
The owners “take” the passports of their slave servants and tell them that if they try to escape they will be arrested and jailed.
@Keith Borg-Micallef:
Let’s not get hysterical about this. The police cannot investigate willy-nilly everybody in any given situation and of course the Filipino will have a regular trial.
Furthermore, any defence lawyer worth his salt would ask the accused (in this case, the Filipino woman) to tell him/her the full circumstances which lead to the attack and if the employer kept the employee under slave conditions, be sure that it will come out in court in some way or another. After all, that is why court proceedings are held. Indeed, it is unfortunate that the employer will have to come from abroad to testify whilst the Filipino’s life is on “pause”. However, the employer will testify and will be submitted to cross-examination so these matters will, in some way or another, come out. Furthermore, the Filipino has the right to testify (and the right to refuse to do so) so it is entirely up to her as well to defend her name.
So, as I said, let’s not get hysterical. Yes, if there are accusations to be levelled against the employer, let them be investigated.
The bottom-line, however, is that yes, the Filipino is are entitled to a “regular trial”, even though what you mean by the words I cannot understand because if you refer to “trial by jury” then the law does not contemplate trial by jury for all the offences in the Criminal Code. However, yes, the Filipino is entitled and shall be submitted to proceedings during which she will have every right to submit her version of the events.
@ Lorna
Hey, thanks a million for the utterly detailed explanation.
It is also true, however, that many times, and I do not mean in court, people just blame immigrants or foreigners without even pondering on it. And that is quite wrong, but it all has to do with the mentality.