Maid’s scars proof enough; QC couple charged
Saying that a housemaid’s scars and deformities were proof of her claims of abuse, the Quezon City prosecutors’ office has filed charges against her former employers.
Reynold Marzan, a bike shop owner, and his wife Annaliza were charged with serious illegal detention in the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Wednesday. No bail was set.
An additional two counts of attempted homicide were filed against Annaliza in the QCRTC on top of seven counts of serious physical injuries in a metropolitan trial court.
Assistant City Prosecutor Ronald Torrijos, however, dismissed the charges of serious physical injuries and attempted murder against Marzan for lack of evidence.
Torrijos said he found Baran’s testimony against her former employers credible.
“The scars on her head and body, the deformities on her face and her blindness in her right eye are eloquent witnesses of its veracity and speak volumes on how she was inhumanely treated,” he noted in his resolution.
Baran, who filed the case with the help of the Public Attorney’s Office, said that she was maltreated by the couple who live at Las Villas del Cielo on Visayas Avenue in Quezon City.
In her complaint, Baran said that she started working for the Marzans in 2007. The abuses began the next year with Annaliza strangling her, burning her nose with a hot iron and pouring cold water or bleach on her burns, she added.
At times, Annaliza would punch her in the eyes until she lost her vision in the right one, she said.
From June 2009 to May 2010, the couple also barred her from leaving the house. Her ordeal, however, worsened from March 2011 to May this year when Annaliza locked her inside a dark toilet, only allowing her out to work or sleep in the living room, Baran stated in her complaint.
Last May, the Marzans finally let her go home as Baran was practically blind, having lost her vision in the right eye. She has retained just 10 percent of her vision in the other eye.
The respondents have not shown up in court to submit their counter-affidavit despite repeated notices.
