HER DREADFUL experience in Jordan might have caused her burns, bruises and a broken back but at the same time proved one thing: Guiarhata Diadel’s dauntless teenage spirit is intact.

Guiarhata, 17, nicknamed Tarhata, experienced harsh physical and emotional exploits while working as a domestic helper in Amman, the capital of and largest city in Jordan.

She was beaten almost every day by her employers and sent to jail thrice. “I had to bear with it. I wasn’t doing it just for myself, you know, to practically stay alive, but also for my family. They need me,” said Tarhata, now safely home.

Bogus promises

She has been a victim of opportunism from the beginning. With fake papers at the age of 16, she flew to Jordan in November 2007 under a dubious deal with a certain Mariam Canacan, a recruiter she met in their hometown in Datu Paglas, Maguindanao.

“She told me I was set to go to Dubai, but when I arrived at the airport, I was surprised to find out that my ticket was for Jordan,” recalled Tarhata, adding that Canacan’s promise of a kind employer, a well-paying job (US$150 per month) and at least one day off every work week was all bogus.

“What’s worse is that she fooled me into believing there’s an existing contract to all of that. When I arrived in Jordan, I discovered there was none,” she said. “We were just being sold to the employers.”

According to Tarhata, it was her decision to work overseas. She said her parents disapproved but were then convinced that it was one easy way for their family to make ends meet. Tarhata is the sixth of 10 children.

She did service for a Jordanian couple with significant roles in the community. Her male employer, Ali Alkayed, works for the government while his wife is a lawyer. Life for her could have been a bit easier since both employers enjoyed decent social dispositions. Actually, it was, but only for the first month.

“I thought it was just a rumor that the employers there show you kindness only in the beginning to make you feel that everything’s okay and after that they’d treat you badly. I was wrong. It happened to me,” said Tarhata.

Till now the Department of Labor and Employment has yet to lift the suspension of the deployment of OFWs to Jordan, which came about because of the growing number of cases of distressed Filipino workers there.

Abuse in large proportions

Tarhata might be best remembered by the public as the “Girlie” in Senate President Manny Villar’s OFW help-line radio advertisement recounting how the wife of her employer pulled her by the hair and dumped her head in hot water. There were more brutalities.

Not allowed to watch TV, listen to the radio, make phone calls or even spend some free time outside her employer’s residence, Tarhata was ordered to work for almost 20 hours a day, from cleaning the entire house to taking care of a 9-month-old baby, treating herself to only a cup of noodles to make it through.

“After breakfast, I wasn’t allowed to eat anymore. Then they would expect me to work sometimes until 1 or 2 a.m., especially when they have guests. I usually start the day at 5 a.m.,” lamented Tarhata, saying that she was not allowed to take a bath either; according to her employers, water was expensive.

There were instances when her female employer would also beat her for reasons she didn’t know. “She even pushed me down the stairs,” she said.

When his wife was away, Alkayed would reportedly ask Tarhata to go to his room and massage him while wearing only his brief and a towel. She informed her female employer about this indecency, but that only put her in a tighter spot: on the couch, being lashed with a belt. Alkayed added insult to the injury by telling his wife that it was Tarhata who
tried to seduce him.

Because the conditions became as bleak as they were suffocating, Tarhata became more depressed. “I was locked up in a room—no food, no water. I was just allowed to go out to pee,” she said. “When they caught me drinking, even if it was just from the bathroom basin, they went berserk.”

She was forced to take a desperate measure. “I jumped off the building,” she said. “My employer had again asked me to go inside his room and I got so scared of what might happen next, so scared that I placed a knife in my pocket when I entered the room. Luckily, he went out for a while and that’s when I saw an opening.

“I tied a water hose from the third floor, making it my means to descend from there. I went down carefully but my hands slipped. I fell hard on the concrete, broke my back, and lost consciousness.”

The next thing Tarhata knew, she was wandering through the woods, running away until finally meeting a couple living nearby. The couple—a Jordanian chap and a Turkish lady—allowed her to stay in their house, fed her, nursed the wounds she got from the fall, and asked if she would like to report what had happened to the police.

“I told them that would only worsen the case,” she said. “I had tried going to the police long before the incident occurred but my employers would just snatch me from there. The police would let me stay in jail but then I’d always end up in the merciless hands of my employers. It is said that sometimes the police and employers have this thing all wired up.”

Getting jailed and getting abducted from prison was not new to Tarhata. She experienced it every time she went to the police to report the cruelty of her employers.

Originally scheduled to come home last April, her employers charged her with theft. Thus, instead of boarding the next flight to Manila, she got locked up in a cell again.

“The first two times my employers forced me out of prison, I was detained in small jails. The last time, they couldn’t get me anymore since I was placed in this large, dark and foul-smelling room. I was cramped there for two months with different women of different nationalities.” Meanwhile, hearings of her case dragged on.

Support from OFWs

“I was asked to wear this long blue-collared shirt, very much like a graduation toga, then got my hands cuffed at my back. They would also load me in this vehicle, where I felt smothered because it doesn’t even have windows.

“The worse part is that sometimes my employers didn’t show up at the hearings.”

But Tarhata, who was not paid a single Jordanian dinar for her services, managed to find some kindred souls throughout the grueling experience. She met them during her frequent stays in the Philippine Overseas Labor Office, the sanctuary of Filipino women in Jordan who need help, especially when it comes to absconding abusive employers.

“There were a lot of us in Polo-Owwa,” she recalled. “I met different kinds of people and they were all supportive of each other. You can feel the warmth and the acceptance. There, I also had the chance to mingle with some Muslim girls like me.”

Thanks to Villar

After winning her case and other post-case negotiations with the Jordanian government, with the help of some people most notably Villar, Philippine Ambassador to Jordan Julius Torre and Philippine embassy attaché Rico Garcia, Tarhata arrived in the country on Oct. 31 at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, the youngest among the nine OFWs recently sent home from Jordan under Villar’s repatriation program.

She went back to Datu Paglas three days after her arrival and reunited with her family.

Only a high school graduate, “One thing I’m wishing for is to continue my studies,” she says. “I want to support the studies of my sisters in the future because I don’t want them to experience what had happened to me in Jordan,” she added, her eyes welling up.

“I also hope that the people who have helped me survive Jordan be blessed, from my fellows to Senator Villar and everyone else. Without them, I wouldn’t be here to start a new life over.”

As far as starting over is concerned, Tarhata is interested in finding a decent job in Manila. Despite the terrors of her experience overseas, she still believes that her young life is yet to ripen with golden possibilities.