In 2012, a Filipina maid sought the help of the police and the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) after being abused by her employers for three years.
During her five years of serving the Marzan household, Bonita Baran got punched and in the face, force-fed cockroaches, stabbed by scissors, and poked in the eyes repeatedly resulting to her permanent blindness.
After five years of legal battle, Baran finally got the justice she has long waited for. On July 14, her employer, Annaliza Marzan was sentenced to reclusion perpetua or 20 to 30 years imprisonment for illegally detaining and mistreating her former housemaid, Judge
The husband, Reynold was charged with being an accomplice for tolerating his wife’s abuses on Baran and was sentenced to eight to 14 years in prison.
The Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 77 sentenced the accused couple for “conspiring together and mutually helping each other, by means of forces, violence and intimidation…[to] then and there willfully, unlawfully and feloniously detain and lock” Baran from June 2009 to May 2012 inside a house in Quezon City.
“Sobrang saya ko. Sa wakas po nakamit ko na po ang hustisya,” Baran said in an interview with ABS-CBN News.
The couple were also ordered to pay Baran P50,000 for moral damages and another P50,000 for exemplary damages.
A separate physical injuries case is still pending in another court.
Credit: GMA News, ABS-CBN News
Photo credit: Senate Photo Release; Bonita Baran, Facebook
