US couple sentenced for abuse of Pinay maid

LOS ANGELES – A former top Hollywood studio lawyer and his wife were sentenced Monday by a Los Angeles judge after admitting to mistreating their Filipino maid in a case of “modern-day slavery.”

US District Judge Dale Fischer ordered James Jackson, 53, a former vice president of legal affairs at Sony Pictures, to perform 200 hours of community service for admitting a charge of alien harboring, the victim being former schoolteacher Nena Ruiz.

Jackson was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine. His wife Elizabeth, 54, was given a three-year jail term after pleading guilty to a charge of forced labor.

In passing sentence, Fischer said Elizabeth Jackson had treated Ruiz worse than her dog. Her attorneys unsuccessfully pleaded for her to receive home detention.

Fischer denied the request for home confinement, telling the court: “It seems she treated her dog much better than she treated her victim.”

Ruiz won $825,000 in damages from her former employers at a 2004 civil trial in Los Angeles.

In Monday’s sentencing, Ruiz watched on closed-circuit television but did not address the court.

Ruiz was forced to eat three-day-old food and to sleep on a dog basket after working 18 hours a day. Over the course of several months’ employment between 2001 and 2002 she was paid only $300.

“These defendants subjected their victim to what amounts to modern-day slavery,” said Justice Department prosecutor Wan Kim after the Jacksons pleaded guilty in August last year.

In a related civil lawsuit, Ruiz said Elizabeth Jackson regularly slapped her and pulled her hair.

The Jacksons also threatened to turn her over to immigration authorities if she left them, Ruiz said. Ruiz finally fled the Jacksons after she was hit in the mouth with a water bottle in February 2002.

Elizabeth Jackson said in a letter read out in court on Monday that she took full responsibility for her actions.

“In my life I have always tried and strived to do the right thing,” she said. “I failed in this case.”

Defense lawyers argued against a jail sentence for Jackson, saying the couple had already suffered enough by being forced to declare bankruptcy.

James Jackson did not speak in court. He had pleaded guilty last year to a count of alien harboring and acknowledged he kept Ruiz at the condominium even though he knew her work visa had expired. – AP