Badly abused OFW returns home

A Filipino domestic helper arrived yesterday at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport after months of enduring physical abuse from a sadistic couple she had worked for in Singapore.

Sporting maltreatment scars from flat iron burns and other injuries, Maritess Montecillo, 22, of Bukidnon, came home badly battered.

She regretted going to Singapore and working for Mr. and Mrs. Lee Ching, who took pleasure inflicting physical harm on her.

"From the time I woke up in the morning, my employers would start inflicting injury on my body, burning my skin with a hot flat iron, and hitting me in the head and arms and legs with a piece of wood or anything they could get their hands on," Maritess tearfully narrated.

"I lived like hell in my employers’ house. There were times that I was forced to eat the stool of their son," Maritess added.

Maritess, who went to Singapore as a tourist to look for a job, also came home penniless as she was not paid her salary for the whole six months she worked as a maid for the Singaporean couple.

The extent of the injuries inflicted on her made airport personnel pity her, particularly when they noticed that she could hardly walk.

Overseas Workers Welfare Administrator Wilhelm Soriano, who assisted Maritess at the NAIA, instructed OWWA personnel to rush ther to a nearby hospital. – Rey Arquiza