US couple faces P10.8-M fine, jail for Pinay ‘slave’

A Maryland couple is indicted following allegations that they forced a Filipina into domestic servitude for 10 years, threatening and assaulting her. If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum sentence of up to 50 years in prison and fines up to $250,000 or P10.82 million, a US television report said over the weekend. The victim successfully ran away from her “masters" in September 2009, and 12 years after her arrival in the US, the matter is now in court. A Reuters Television report said a federal grand jury on June 8 indicted the couple on charges that they held a Filipino in domestic servitude for a decade, paying her minimal wages for long hours of labor. According to the five-count indictment, Alfred (73 years old) and Gloria (60) Edwards lured the victim, an uneducated mother of eight, to come to the United States and work as a domestic servant, even procuring a fraudulent visa for her. The couple is also charged with immigration violations. “The defendants recruited the victim in the Philippines in 1998. They then brought her to the United States in 1999 and held her in slavery-like [conditions] until the end of 2009," Reuters quoted US Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein as saying. The indictment states the couple confiscated the woman’s documents once she arrived in the States and forced her to work 13-hour days, using a scheme of threats, assaults, withholding of documents, withholding of pay, and a peonage contract to coerce the victim's continued service, the report said. “Peonage" refers to the historical practice, especially in the southern US and Mexico, of a creditor holding a debtor in servitude. “The victim had a family in the Philippines and during a period of time her family was actually residing in an apartment owned by the defendants in the Philippines and one of the allegations in the indictment is that the defendants used that to their advantage," Rosenstein said as quoted by the report. Reuters said residents in the quiet Maryland neighborhood were stunned by the allegations. Some refused to speak to the media, but others said they had no idea a servant lived with the family. “I never even knew. I tried to get them to be my client but I guess that’s why they never wanted me to do nothing for him," Reuters quoted an unidentified resident as saying. —Marnie Tonson/LBG, GMA News