Tears of joy

Press, 16 August 1980, Page 9

Tears of joy

NZPA-Reuter Manila Sixty two Filipino children aged 10 to 17 wept and clapped with joy when the Manila police rescued them from their -dungeon-like quarters in an-employment agency on Thursday. The police action ended months of hunger, pain, subhuman conditions and sexual abuse.

The police raided the employment agency on tips from two girls who had escaped and said that they were kidnapped from their provincial homes, locked up and kept as virtual slaves while awaiting household-help buyers.

The police also began digging up parts of the Manila agency office where the girls said two persons who alleged-

ly died of hunger and abuse were buried. The girls at .the Empire Employment Agency were hired out to clients for a service fee of $4B each, reports sgid. Charges of kidnapping illegal detention and violation of child labour laws would be laid against the agency’s owners and personnel, the police said. Pale and hungry, some of the girls said they were lured to Manila and promised good jobs by the agency staff. Others said they were forcibly taken. All were crammed into three small rooms which were continuously padlocked and given only rice, porridge and dried fish to eat. Evelyn, aged 11, told the police they were often beaten

and slapped with a wooden shoe when they did not answer properly during the morning roll-call. “I could not at times answer because I was often dizzy from hunger and lack of sleep,” she said. Sometimes the young girls were paired off with Chinese customers for a night and returned to the agency the next morning. The girls said some of the male employees at the agency would sometimes slip into their rooms at night, and abuse them. Evelyn and another girl escaped from the agency on Tuesday when they were ordered to buy something at a nearby store. A sympathetic citizen took them to a police station where they reported their plight.