Filipina caregiver in US gets back at her employers
JOSEPH G. LARIOSA, GMANews.TV
10/18/2008 | 05:17 PM
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CHICAGO, Illinois – It was life imitating art for a Filipino caregiver who turned the tables on her employers and their children and the children’s grandparents.
In a scene lifted from the Cinderella fairy tale, Irma Martinez, who was enslaved for 19 years, exacted vengeance with her former employers, doctors Jefferson M. and Elnora M. Calimlim, by filing a civil suit against them and their three children.
Stepping out of the shadows, Martinez, 42, took over the place of federal authorities to become the sole complainant against the Calimlim family that even included the parents of her employers, Dr. Jovito Mendoza, who died in 1993, and Mrs. Bending Mendoza, as co-conspirators for “human trafficking and harboring enterprise."
Martinez, who has now legalized her status in America as a holder of T visa, cited the Calimlim’s three children, namely, Jefferson M., Christopher Jack and Christina Calimlim as additional defendants for “human trafficking that includes recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery."
The case, which some believe would not have been filed had the Calimlims let their convictions by US District Court Judge Rudolph T. Randa of Milwaukee stand, came after the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit based in Chicago, Illinois affirmed last Aug. 15 their “convictions, but vacate their sentences and remand for sentencing in accordance with this opinion."
The Calimlims were convicted by a jury for violation of forced labor statute and for harboring for financial gain and were sentenced to four years in prison by Judge Randa. They would have been released on Sept. 3, 2010.
Their son, Jefferson M. Calimlim, 32, their co-accused before Judge Randa, was found guilty of one-count of harboring an alien but acquitted on two other charges. Jefferson M. was sentenced to three years probation, including four months of house arrest with an electronic monitoring device and fined $5,000 but did not appeal. He is charged again in the latest filing.
In her latest filing, Martinez charged the Calimlims with six counts for Civil RICO, conspiracy, Wisconsin Organized Crime Control, involuntary servitude or forced labor and trafficking with respect to peonage and slavery before the US District Court of the Eastern District of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
Martinez, of Naga city in the eastern Philippine region of Bicol and now residing in Chicago, Illinois, accused the Calimlims and Mendozas of establishing their family as an “association-in-fact enterprise within the meaning of Human Trafficking and Alien Harboring Enterprise for obtaining, concealing, and maintaining Martinez’s involuntary labor."
The accused in the “Human Trafficking and Alien Harboring Enterprise were organized and had acted in a manner of hierarchical decision-making controlled by the Parent Defendants for the purpose of carrying out the illegal scheme set forth above" that spanned two continents, with ongoing activities around Milwaukee, Wisconsin and in the Philippines over a period of more than 19 years.
The Calimlims and the “Mendozas trafficked Martinez across international borders for the purpose of obtaining her involuntary labor, transported her across state borders, transported her within the state of Wisconsin, sent a tiny portion of her wages to the Philippines and removed Martinez from the legitimate labor force," according to court records.
Martinez accused the Calimlims of letting her work about 17 hours a day, seven days a week, for 19 years, doing cleaning and other household chores in her employers’ home, condominiums and two-story apartments. She was also asked to do other odd works, including changing oil of her employers’ several cars and was paid “no more than $18,000" during those 19 years.
She was given a “dedicated phone line, and requiring Martinez to conceal her face any time she was in public," and diverted her letters" to her parents to the Philippines. Her employers “read and often confiscated" her mails, required her to use two envelopes to mail her letters and to use a dedicated P.O. Box secured for the purpose of transmitting inaccurate, as well as legitimate, communications to the Philippines" and defrauded her and her relatives out of money she hoped to send home to them.
Jefferson Sr., who has violent temper caused by alcohol consumption, verbally and physically abused her. At one time, when he was so angry, he threw a shoe at Martinez because she did not hear him calling her name. When she broke her tooth, she was not allowed to see a dentist, telling her medicine “was too expensive." She also did not have health care either.
She is now represented by high-powered law firms Jenner & Block of Chicago and Washington and Friebert, Finerty & St. John, S.C. of Milwaukee. - GMANews.TV
