OFW is reunited with her family
SAVED BY HER FACEBOOK ACCOUNT
CALASIAO— Thanks to Facebook, a 45-year old overseas Filipino worker who was badly beaten by her employer’s son in Saudi Arabia is back home Monday to be reunited with her family.
Jocelyn Junatas Lucena of Barangay San Miguel here, whose photos uploaded in her Facebook account became viral showing the physical harm inflicted on her, said she is thankful for the quick rescue of the Philippine Embassy in Jeddah.
She said in a phone interview that help came barely five days after she posted her photos.
“I’m very thankful I’m now home, that I am now back in the Philippines after my ordeal on May 30,” she said.
Lucena arrived in the country on June 12 and stayed at the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration office in Pasay City while awaiting financial assistance from someone before going back home.
Lucena, a tinapa (smoked fish) vendor who wanted her six children (the eldest, 24 years old, and the youngest aged nine) to have a better future, initially worked in Hong Kong in 2012 and then went to Saudi Arabia in Abha province where she worked for the past one year and three months.
“They have not reached college yet so I wanted to work abroad,” she said. Her husband, Conrado Lucena, Sr., 50, is a farmer.
What got the ire of her abuser was when she bought a sim card for another Filipina maid working at the second floor of the building owned by her employer’s family.
Lucena said she took pity on her friend who could not communicate with her family in the Philippines because her sim card was confiscated by her employer.
“I’m also a mother and I understand her feelings and worries and her family’s anxieties too, so I tried to help her,” she said so she initially often lent her cell phone.
But when Jocelyn’s children began to complain about not being to call her because her phone was with her friend, it was then when she decided to buy her friend her own sim card.
When her employer’s son learned about it, she was beaten and kicked black and blue. Apparently it was not the first time she was violently hurt but kept these incidents to herself.
The last was the most serious so she decided to get some help by taking pictures of her bruised body and uploaded her photos in her Facebook account, asking for help.
When her employer found out what she did two days later, her cellphone was taken away but not after she was berated and humiliated.
Help finally came another two days later. Noemi Miniano, a Filipina who belongs to Migrante and married to an Egyptian, initially contacted her friend in the police department, and with Vice Consul Alexander Joseph Estomo of the Philippine Consulate office in Jeddah, the police came and rescued her.
Her abuser paid her 10,000 riyal as settlement. Lucena decided not to file a case because that would prevent her from returning home, and she desperately wanted to be with her family that was already worried sick about her.
She said, however, that despite the ordeal she suffered, she still wants to work abroad. But her husband told her the family would discuss this when she gets home.
Lucena appealed to the government to also help others in worse situations who continue to wait for justice in the consulate office in Saudi Arabia. (Tita Roces)
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