OFW Safety Watch

April 9, 2008 at 9:36 am · Filed under OFW Issues

Japanese machine-washed Filipina’s body parts — reports

Agence France-Presse 04/08/2008TOKYO — A Japanese man who was arrested over the death of a Filipina woman allegedly chopped up her body and cleaned the pieces in a washing machine, reports said Tuesday.Media accounts also revealed that Hiroshi Nozaki, 48, had served prison time for a similar case of mutilating the body of a Filipina bar hostess in 2000 but was set free. Full details

Migrante seeks help for 2 runaway maids in Jordan

By Jerome Aning Philippine Daily Inquirer 04/08/20

MANILA, Philippines — An overseas Filipino workers’ group has sought government help for two sisters recruited as domestic helpers in Jordan who have run away from their allegedly abusive employer. Full Details

6 Filipino seamen among 30 seized off Somalia—DFA

By Veronica Uy INQUIRER.net 04/08/2008

MANILA, Philippines – (UPDATE) Six Filipinos were among 30 crewmembers of a French luxury cruise yacht taken hostage by pirates off the coast of Somalia last week, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday. Full details.

Bodies of murdered Pinay and son to arrive Sunday from Japan

March 28, 2008

An official of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Friday announced that the bodies of the Filipino woman and her baby boy killed by her Japanese husband will be flown to the Philippines on Sunday. Full Detail.

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OFW Safety Watch

April 1, 2008 at 2:08 pm · Filed under OFW Issues

Murder at Home

By Rodel Rodis
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 11:20am (Mla time) 04/01/2008
It was never a factual issue that William Corpuz murdered his wife Marissa in their San Francisco home in September of 2004. Corpuz turned himself in to the police and confessed that he had slashed his wife’s throat with his fishing knife. The legal question was whether he was guilty of murder in the first degree (with a mandatory sentence of 26 years to life) or the second degree (16 years to life).

After a four-week trial in May 2007, a San Francisco jury deliberated for 1 ½ days and unanimously agreed that Corpuz was guilty of murder 1. But on March 14, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Jerome Benson overruled the jury and reduced the charge to murder 2. Because he confessed to the crime, the facts were never in dispute. Corpuz, a caregiver in a home for the elderly, had been previously arrested in September of 2003 for domestic violence (DV) – having choked his wife then slammed her head face-first into the headboard of their bed.

Despite a long history as a victim of her husband’s violence, Marissa stood by her man and minimized her injury to get the District Attorney to reduce the DV felony charge to a misdemeanor. He was released on probation on condition that he attended a 52-week domestic abuse program. Corpuz enrolled in a year of weekly two-hour sessions at AVACA, the Abuse, Violence and Anger Cessation Alliance, a program stressing “a new technique that focuses on abusers’ thought patterns and cultural conditioning, in hopes of changing the way they deal with stress.”

Among the 150 people who have gone through this program, Corpuz was considered a model student – always on time for his sessions, he paid his fees, actively engaged in class discussions, bought and read books on domestic violence. He attended 39 weekly sessions, the last one just four days before he killed his wife.

In his police confession, Corpuz admitted that he had originally intended to shoot his wife that morning and prepared a gun with a single bullet two hours before the murder, but decided instead to get two knives from the kitchen. After two hours watching TV together in their bedroom, Corpuz said Marissa’s laughs and insults caused him to “explode” and slash his wife’s throat. “I don’t know. It just happened,” he told police.

Corpuz’s attorney, Randall Martin, said his client was “extremely remorseful” and that he had suffered long-standing emotional abuse during the marriage. “He was emasculated, depressed, ashamed and suicidal,” Martin said in asking the judge to reduce the charge to murder 2.

In announcing his decision, Judge Benson said that while the killing was an “outrageous and savage domestic violence murder… (he) found that under state law, deliberation had been absent from Corpuz’s acts.” According to California Penal Code § 189, however, murder in the first degree includes “lying in wait” or “any other kind of willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing.” Judge Benson did not believe Corpuz had deliberated enough for a murder 1 conviction and instead blamed state law for not including domestic violence as a “special circumstance” that would mandate a murder 1 conviction.

“Now why should a person who beats and kills his wife or girlfriend be treated differently from a stranger who kills someone during a robbery?” asked Marily Mondejar, President of the Filipina Women’s Network (FWN). Mondejar’s group had attended the trial and the March 14 sentencing hearing of Corpuz and was outraged at the sentence reduction. At a press conference on March 26, FWN members denounced the Benson decision and called for legislation that would include domestic violence as a “special circumstance” that would mandate a murder 1 conviction like a murder committed during a robbery attempt.

But this would be a double-edged sword. Wives who kill their abusive husbands, though in self-defense, may be charged with this special circumstance allegation as well. The solution, according to Beverly Upton for the Domestic Violence Consortium, may be found in “encouraging judges to look at how they can interpret the law to do more justice for women and communities in domestic violence and sexual assault.”

At the FWN press conference, Upton disclosed that in the year she first assumed her post in San Francisco in 1998, there were 10 women who were murdered in the city as a result of domestic violence and four of the victims were Filipino women. On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in the US every day.

In 2000, 1,247 women were killed by an intimate partner. According to the Domestic Violence Prevention Fund (endabuse.org), as many as three million women in America are physically abused by their husbands or boyfriends per year. Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime. According to a 1998 Commonwealth Fund survey, nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report physical or sexual abuse by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives.

What accounts for this violence against women? A clue may be found in a new 2004 Spanish law which redefined domestic violence as “violence originating from the position of power of men over women.” The rationale for the law is that as long as men grow up in a culture which emphasizes male superiority over women and views women as the property of men, there will be male violence against women.

“Marisa Corpuz is at peace now, but this murder really heightened awareness of domestic violence in the Filipino community,” Mondejar noted.

Filipina sentenced to death in Kuwait

By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 17:50:00 04/01/2008MANILA, Philippines — Kuwait’s supreme court has upheld a death sentence against an overseas Filipino worker for the killing of her seven-year-old ward in 2007, the Department of Foreign Affairs said.

May Vecina, 28, was convicted of killing the boy by slitting his throat on January 6 last year, as well as attempting to kill his older brother and sister who sustained injuries.

DFA undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Esteban Conejos, who announced the court’s decision Tuesday, said Vecina has been sentenced to hang.

The court ruling is final and only needs to be signed by Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah to be implemented.

But Conejos said Manila would appeal the case to Kuwaiti authorities.

Conejos said Vecina’s family has been informed of this latest development in the case and also assured that the government will continue to exert all legal means to save her life.

He refused to divulge the details of these legal actions, although he did not discount the possibility of paying “blood money” after getting the victim’s family’s forgiveness.

“We will take diplomatic initiatives. But right now I don’t want to be specific…We will not give up. We will continue all possible legal means,” he said.

Vecina was also found guilty of slitting the throat of the victim’s 11-year-old brother and stabbing his 17-year-old sister. Both survived the attacks however.

The Filipina, who was working in Kuwait for six months when the incident happened, was reportedly in constant conflict with her employer.

After the incident, Vecina leapt from the second floor of her employer’s house, causing her fractures and injuries.

Vecina’s case and those similar to hers prompted the labor department to impose stricter deployment rules for household workers, including $5,000 bonds for repatriation and other fees.

Vecina was sentenced to death by a lower court in July last year and the appeals court confirmed the ruling in September.

Death sentences in the Gulf state are carried out by hanging.

In December, the Kuwaiti ruler agreed to commute the death sentence to life in jail for another Filipina maid, Marilou Ranario, who was convicted of killing her employer, after a visit by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

About 73,000 Filipinos, including 60,000 women employed mostly as housemaids, work in oil-rich Kuwait and earn less than $200 a month on average, labor groups say. With a report from Agence France-Presse in Kuwait

Roxas to aid slain Filipina’s kin in case vs husband

By Felipe V. Celino
Visayas Bureau
First Posted 17:59:00 04/01/2008
ROXAS CITY, Philippines — The family of the 35-year-old Capiceña and her infant son, who were killed allegedly by her Japanese husband in Tokyo, said on Tuesday they would pursue criminal charges against him.

Michael Lopez, younger brother of Chrisanta Lopez-Nagano and uncle to eight-month-old Naomasa, said Senator Manuel Roxas II promised to help their family pursue the case against Masayoshi Nagano.

According to Lopez, Roxas vowed to press the Department of Justice to help the Lopez family seek justice.

The remains of Chrisanta and Naomasa arrived in Capiz on Tuesday on the 6:20 a.m. Philippine Airlines flight from Manila.

From the airport, the remains were brought to the victim’s residence in Barangay (village) Tanque, Roxas City.

Lopez said the two would be brought to Mambusao town, also in Capiz, on Saturday morning to be buried.

He said they informed their ailing 65-year-old mother Auria that Chrisanta and her son died in an accident.

The Lopez family learned of the deaths of Chrisanta and her son from her friends in Japan, identified only as Mesti and Jenny.

Chrisanta is the second of five siblings of the late Supremo Jore-Lopez and Auria Mahusay. Chrisanta went to Nagara, Japan in 1998 to work as an entertainer. She met her husband Nagano in 2002 and they got married in civil rites in Capiz in 2003.

The couple returned to the Philippines in 2005 and were wed at the Roxas City Metropolitan Cathedral.

The last time the couple visited Capiz was in August 2006.

According to information gathered by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Nagano, who is now in the custody of the Tokyo police, surrendered to authorities and confessed to killing his wife and son over financial problems during the Holy Week.

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