OFW in Kuwait wins rape case, flown home to PH

MANILA, Philippines — A distressed overseas Filipino worker in Kuwait has been repatriated to the Philippines after winning her case against a Kuwaiti policeman who raped her eight years ago.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Department of Labor and Employment said Marites Torijano went home in the Philippines last Nov. 29 after spending eight years at the Migrant Workers and Other Filipino Resource Center while awaiting the outcome of her complaint.

Labor Attaché 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 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.

However, 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 in the neck and back, DOLE said.

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.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III lauded the efforts of the Philippine Overseas Labor Offce and the Philippine embassy in Kuwait for successfully winning the case for Torijano and bringing her home. [ac]