THE STORY

“I’m still holding the trauma of those 11 months” “I’m still not healed from now. I start shaking when they open the topic about it.” - Sara

In July 2006, a 34-day war began between Lebanon and Israel. The Embassy of the Philippines assembled all Filipino nationals in Lebanon at the Embassy during this time. However, Ibtissam, whose family background was Syrian, took Sara to Syria. They stayed there for three months. According to Ibtissam’s Facebook profile, she has three siblings who live in Damascus. 

Sara’s life in Syria was harder than in Beirut. “In Syria, her house is three stories and I am cleaning it all by myself. I am cleaning her sister’s house and her son Muhammad’s house also.” She was not remunerated for all the additional work she was made to do. After the war, Ibtissam brought her back to Lebanon.

Ibtissam commits more venomous acts to control her employee

Ibtissam’s sons sexually abuse Sara

Ibtissam and Ali have five children: Muhammad, Alaaddein, Kinda, Sarah and Amir. Like their mother, they abused Sara to different degrees. In her testimony, Sara describes her suffering at their hands.

The eldest son, Muhammad, would frequently ask Sara to bring tubs of water to the bathroom while he was showering. He would be fully naked. The first time it happened, he called her back to the bathroom after she had gone to the kitchen, in shock. “I’m scared, I don’t know what to do, I don't know what he will do to me and nobody is at home.” Kinda returned home and asked what the pot of water was for, and Sara explained that Mohammad had asked her to bring the water to him while he showered.

Sara says that Alaaddein, the second son, sexually and physically abused her. “Alaa is so cruel. He would ask me to find his glasses, quickly. And he would grab a wooden chair, gonna hit me [if she didn’t get them quickly enough].” Then one day, things took a turn for the worse. When the house was empty, he decided to prey on Sara. “My madam, she is not around, he come out of the kitchen and he sees that nobody is in the house and he goes back to his room and shouts ‘Sara, come, bring me a glass of water.’ Then he told me to come near and lay on his bed. And he started to touch my body and told me ‘I will teach you how to make massage’. He touched my back and my private parts, and then I started to cry and I said, please, no sir.”

Sara is visibly very distressed and crying as she recounts her abuse. She left the room but Alaaddein called her back in. “He told me to press his body, and he said ‘don’t ever write it down in a letter for your family in the Philippines’. After this incident, he continued to verbally abuse Sara and threaten her. “He started to be cruel to me, like he wants to hit me, and he’s a very big guy. I was afraid he might hurt me or I might get paralysed,” she says. She describes how Alaaddein constantly bullied her, threw footballs at her and hit her with hangers. 

Other Filipino workers in neighbouring houses would communicate with Sarab y passing her notes telling her about the family and its previous workers. The notes recounted how a former employee, Norcia, was also abused by the family. They also locked her inside the house, alone, or with Alaaddein. Whilst cleaning, Sara once came across Norcia’s medical papers, and saw that she had had broken joints. Sara was frightened; what had happened to Norcia whilst working for the family? Her thoughts turned to suicide as a way to escape her employers. “I thought about drinking medicine to die as quickly as possible, and heal this trauma,” she says.

Sara’s parents would sometimes try to call her employer’s home. She says she wasn't allowed to contact her family and her employers didn’t send home her salary regularly. To this day, she is owed five months of her salary. She only realised after she left that her family had been writing her letters which her employers had prevented her from seeing. Sara’s family had also not received any of the letters she had written them. It was yet another malicious act to ensure Sara remained under their control. 

Sara escapes her enslavement

Sara finally managed to escape the clutches of the Alsaadi-AlKhatib family on the day they were moving apartments. It was 10am, and Ibtissam was busy talking on the phone, and Alaaddein was asleep. She tried the main door, and for once it wasn’t locked. She quickly gathered her papers, her contract and a photocopy of her passport, and left the house. “I walked down the stairs from the fourth floor, and after that I ran.”

She flagged down a taxi, and begged the driver to help her get to the Embassy of the Philippines. She told him she was being abused by her employers. “He told me, come, we will find it for you. He asked every shop where the embassy was. When I saw the flag of the Philippines, I cried because I was so happy. When I tried to pay the driver with the coins I had in my pocket, he refused, and said ‘god will give it to me.’”

Two days later, Ibtissam came to the embassy to try to get her employee back. She even went so far as to hire a Filipno woman to attempt to lure Sara back, with the promise of $500, a day off every weekend, a salary increase, and a new phone and sim card. Sara refused flat out. The next day, Ibtissam’s husband Ali AlKhatib came to the embassy. “He told me, come back to me, come to our house. I’ll give you food from my hands to your mouth.” When Sara refused to come back with him, he told her: “Hear me, you’re a hemara (donkey) and a fool.” 

After her stay at the embassy, Sara was taken to NGO Caritas. Yet again, Ibtissam attempted to get her slave back. This time she came alone. “She wanted to take me. She told me, I can let you work for another family but you need to pay me $5,000.” Sara was advised by the embassy that she had two options: be deported to the Philippines, or find a new employer. She decided on the latter, and worked part time for UN workers. “They treat me well, they are helpful and kind. I work for Swiss, Croatian and Portuguese, Spanish, Irish..” 

Each time the embassy and Caritas contacted Ibtissam Alsaadi, she insisted that her former employee had to pay her $5,000 before she could release her from the contract. Sara continued to work in Lebanon, and in 2013 she filed a complaint through Caritas, and was allocated a lawyer who contacted Ibtissam Alsaadi on her behalf. But Ibtissam was still asking for $5,000.

Meanwhile, Sara was following the case of Halima, her successor who was enslaved and abused by Ibtissam Alsaadi and her family for a decade. She questioned why the staff of the Embassy of the Philippines had met the Alsaadi-AlKhatib family in a restaurant in Raouche, and not at the embassy.

In April 2017, Sara heard that staff changes had taken place at the Embassy of the Philippines, so she decided to try her luck once more. She filed a second complaint, and requested to return home to the Philippines. Sara paid a $2,200 penalty to Ibtissam Alsaadi in return for her papers. At the embassy, she says she encountered many women in similar situations to her own. “There were a lot of other runaways, same as me with different employers but nearly the same experience as me. Maltreatment, lack of food, no salary, even lack of room in the house. They’re asking also for justice.”

She ends her testimony with thanks, and a warning: “I invite you, please don’t go to Lebanon. I know there is still good employers there but I heard a lot of people who are still there and suffering. You are lucky if you survive. You need to be strong. If you still continue [to go to Lebanon], please be brave and don’t let anyone put you down. We are human and we are the ones who can stop human slavery and trafficking.

“I want justice for the Alsaadi-AlKhatib family. I want them to be in jail and be punished by law, and be banned from taking any house maid from any country. I want justice for the damage they did to me and Halima.”