OFW in Kuwait wins rape case, returns home to Philippines

A distressed overseas Filipino worker in Kuwait finally returned home to the Philippines on Sunday after winning her case against a Kuwaiti police officer who raped her eight years ago.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Department of Labor and Employment said the OFW rejoined her family 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 the OFW was repatriated along with 76 wards of the half-way house via Kuwait Airways.

Mustafa said the OFW was deployed to Kuwait by Zontar Manpower Services Inc. as a 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.

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

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

After 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.

The OFW 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.

Meanwhile, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III lauded the efforts of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office and the Philippine Embassy in Kuwait for winning the case for the OFW and bringing her home.—AOL, GMA News