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Raped OFW in Kuwait wins case, flown home

THE Department of Labor and Employment yesterday reported that the longest staying distressed worker in the government’s half-way home in Kuwait finally went home on Sunday, Nov. 29, after winning her case against a Kuwaiti policeman who raped her eight years ago.

Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said Marites Torijano rejoined her family in the Philippines after spending eight years at the Migrant Workers and Other Filipino Resource Center while awaiting the outcome of her complaint.

Bello praised the efforts of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office and the Philippine embassy in Kuwait for successfully winning the case for Torijano and bringing her home.

Labor Attache Nasser Mustafa said Torijano was repatriated along with 76 wards of the half-way house via Kuwait Airways.

Mustafa said Torijano was deployed to Kuwait by Zontar Manpower Services Inc. as domestic worker in September 2006 but was later on transferred to work in a dress shop located in Farwaniya.

While her residence visa was still for renewal by her employer, she was caught by a Kuwaiti policeman in September 2012.

Instead of bringing her to the police station, she was driven to a dark dessert in South Surra where she was raped inside the police patrol car and was stabbed on the neck and back.

Torijano managed to crawl by the roadside where she was found by a passing car and was brought to Mubarak Hospital.

Following two years of court trial, the policeman was sentenced to death in June 2014 by the Court of First Instance. The sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment by the Court of Appeals upon the appeal of the policeman’s legal counsel.

Torijano was awarded civil damages amounting to P3-million through the representative of the Philippine Embassy and Kuwaiti human rights lawyer Sheika Fawzia Salem Al-Sabah.