By Vir B. Lumicao
A lawyer for a Filipina domestic worker accused of stealing
toiletries told the court the employer must have made up the case to stop the
helper from reporting to police the verbal and physical abuse she had suffered
from the employer’s husband.
Thelma Damiago was accused of stealing small bottles of
shampoo, shower gel and lotion, plus a bar of soap by her employer Jennifer Wong Wen-yi on Oct 15 last year, about two weeks after she handed in her
resignation letter.
Her Duty Lawyer-assigned counsel William Wong said in
summing up the defense case on Jan 31 that Damiago decided to quit just two
months into her two-year contract because she could no longer tolerate her
“bad-tempered” male employer.
In an audio recording played back in Eastern court during Wong’s
cross examination by the defense, a man was heard shouting angrily at Damiago
while calling her “stupid” a few times.
At one point, Damiago was heard reacting aloud, “Sir, don’t hurt
me, Sir, please don’t hurt me” when the man allegedly hit her in the neck with
a plastic folder.
Then the maid was heard telling another woman, “Sir hit me
in my neck with a folder”. The woman, who Wong admitted “sounds like me”,
simply said “What?”
The defense counsel said the audio was recorded by Damiago
one day last September, before she handed her resignation letter.
The prosecution tried to exclude the audio and a longer handwritten
version of the resignation letter the defense lawyer presented just before the
trial, but Magistrate Leona Chan accepted them.
Prosecution lawyer Alexander Cheung suggested to the maid
that she made up the letter after police arrested her, but the Filipina
insisted it was the first resignation letter that she handed to her employer on
Sept 22 last year.
She said Wong did not sign it, saying she did not like the
reason cited there. The employer allegedly ordered her to write a shorter
letter stating that she was quitting “due to personal issues”.
Wong, who lives in Repulse Bay
She also said the maid was using so many things in her
cooking that were bad for her diabetic husband and asthmatic son.
She said that on Oct 15 last year, while looking for a new
pair of running shoes, her other maid Jazel Urbanes, told her she had seen the
defendant put the shoes in her luggage.
Wong said she told Urbanes to tell Damiago she would check the contents of her luggage at 11pm that day
because she might have taken other items from the household.
On inspection Wong said she found in Damiago’s bag the
toiletry set she had bought in Thailand
