Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 1) – An overseas Filipino worker finally arrived home from Kuwait on Sunday, after winning her case against a Kuwaiti cop who raped in 2012.
The Department of Labor and Employment on Tuesday said Marites Torijano was repatriated along with 76 wards of the Migrant Workers and Other Filipino Resource Center, where she spent eight years while awaiting the outcome of her complaint.
According to Labor Attaché Nasser Mustafa, Torijano was first deployed to Kuwait in September 2006 as a domestic helper. But she was transferred later on to work in a dress shop in Farwaniya.
While her residence visa was still for renewal by her employer, she was caught by a Kuwaiti policeman in September 2012. She was driven to a desert in South Surra, where she was sexually assaulted inside a police car, then stabbed in the neck and back.
After two years of court trial, the police officer was sentenced to death in June 2014 by the Court of First Instance. The sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment by the Kuwaiti Court of Appeals upon the appeal of the suspect’s legal counsel.
Torijano was awarded civil damages amounting to ₱3 million through a Philippine Embassy representative and Kuwaiti human rights lawyer Sheika Fawzia Salem-Al Sabah.
With this development, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III commended the Philippine Overseas Labor Office and the Philippine embassy in Kuwait for helping Torijano win her case.
