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| Thelma B. Damiago |
A Filipina domestic worker accused of theft by her employer has
been acquitted by an Eastern Court magistrate who said the prosecution failed
to provide enough evidence to prove the defendant’s guilt.
“In a situation like this, the burden of proof rests on the
prosecution. Defendant, you are therefore acquitted,” Magistrate Leona Chan
told the helper, Thelma B. Damiago, who immediately wailed uncontrollably and
embraced her Filipina interpreter tightly.
Magistrate Chan also said the disclosure of the defendant
that she had been hit and verbally abused by her male employer should be given
attention by the authorities.
During the trial, a voice recording was played in which a
man identified by Damiago as her male employer could be heard hurling abuse at
the helper.
Following her acquittal, Damiago, told The SUN how relieved
she was about being cleared of any wrongdoing. But the 33-year-old single mother she said she wanted to look
for a new employer as she had been jobless for four
months.
Damiago was given shelter by her
employment agent, Technic Employment Service Centre, since she was released on
bail.
The Filipina was accused by her employer, Jennifer Wong Wen-yi of stealing small
bottles of shampoo, shower gel and lotion, plus a bar of soap on Oct 15 last
year.
The allegation was made two weeks
after Damiago handed in her resignation letter, citing the alleged verbal and
physical abuse inflicted on her by Wong’s husband.
Solicitor
William Wong, who represented Damiago, said during the trial that the employer
must have made up the case to stop the helper from reporting to police the
abuse she suffered from the employer’s husband.
In an audio recording played during Jennifer Wong’s cross examination by the defense, a man was heard shouting angrily at Damiago while calling her “stupid” a few times.
At one
point, Damiago was heard reacting aloud, “Sir, don’t hurt me, Sir, please don’t
hurt me” when the man allegedly hit her in the neck with a plastic folder.
Then
the maid was heard telling another woman, “Sir hit me in my neck with a
folder”. The woman, who the employer admitted “sounds like me”, simply said
“What?”
The
defense counsel said the audio was recorded by Damiago one day last September,
before she handed her resignation letter.
The
prosecution tried to exclude the audio and a longer handwritten resignation
letter the defense lawyer presented just before the trial, but Magistrate Chan
accepted them.
Prosecution
lawyer Alexander Cheung suggested to the maid that she made up the letter after
police arrested her.
But
Damiago insisted it was the first resignation letter she had given her employer
on Sept 22 last year but which Wong did not sign because she did not like the
reason cited there.
Wong,
who lives in Repulse Bay with her husband and their two
children, said that on Oct 15 last year, while looking for a new pair of
running shoes, her other maid Jazel Urbanes told her she had seen Damiago put
the shoes in her luggage.
Wong
said she told Urbanes to tell Damiago she would check her luggage at 11pm
that day, the defendant’s day off, as she might have taken other items from the
household.
On
inspection, Wong said she found the toiletry set she had bought in Thailand
Wong
claimed she also found the shoes, although these were not included in the
charge sheet.
Urbanes also
testified against Damiago, but the defense managed to show several
inconsistencies in her evidence.
